书籍推荐:《Democracy and Economic Planning——The Political Economy of a Self-governing Society(民主和经济计划——一个自我治理的社会的政治经济学)》

现代社会主义者对于社会主义下的经济民主模式主要有两种类型的设想:一种是保留市场的市场社会主义,这种我之前在博客上有进行过介绍:经济民主模式介绍 ,这里就不再重复了;还有一种是完全废除市场的分布式民主计划经济,而这就是我今天要介绍的书籍内容和其作者Pat Devine的主张。

很多人一听到”计划经济“就炸毛,把计划经济等同于USSR和中国的中央计划经济(更准确的称呼是指令经济),其实并非如此,指令经济只是计划经济的其中一种,而且计划经济也根本不是社会主义的专利,事实上资本主义社会中已经出现过计划经济模式了。哦,不要惊讶,接下来我会介绍相关内容。

作者Pat Devine是英国政治经济学家, Manchester大学的教授,书籍下载链接:http://lib1.org/_ads/04FC9455A9641B8C99EBE0F19CBB2590

接下来就一起看看书籍内容吧。事先说明一点:Pat Devine是完全否定市场的(作者自己的说法是”保留市场机制,反对市场力量“,但其实际主张基本等同于完全不要市场),并且认为社会主义无法和市场兼容,而我并不赞同这点,但作为介绍者,我不会因此故意扭曲其言论,而是会如实介绍给所有人,让读者们自行判断。此外,这本书的写作对象也不是那些不了解社会主义的人,所以我建议初学者先根据我的指南搞清楚社会主义的基本概念主张历史流派,然后再来阅读这本书。

首先看看作者的总体介绍:

This is a book about transformation. It starts from two assumptions.

这是一本关于转型的书。 它从两个假设开始。

The first is that neither the capitalist countries of the West nor the statist countries of the East 1 represent acceptable ways of organizing society. A third way is needed, and to create it involves the conscious transformation of existing societies. The second assumption is that people create themselves by acting on the circumstances in which they find themselves. Depending on the internal and external resources available to them, people transform to a greater or lesser extent both their circumstances and themselves.

第一个假设是西方的资本主义国家和东方(1)的中央集权国家都不能代表可接受的组织社会的方式(这就是我为什么说这本书不是为不了解社会主义的人准备的,因为能接受这个假设的必然已经是社会主义者了)。 需要第三种方式,创造它涉及现有社会的有意识的转变。 第二个假设是人们通过根据在发现自己的环境中行动来创造自己。 根据人们可利用的内部和外部资源,人们或多或少地转变所在的环境和自己。

The third way set out in this book is a model of democratic planning based on negotiated coordination. It is democratic, which distinguishes it from the command planning of the statist countries. It is planning, which distinguishes it from the instability and lack of conscious social purpose characteristic of capitalist countries. It is based on negotiated coordination, which distinguishes it from market socialism, the only reasonably worked-out alternative model of a third way that has so far been proposed.

本书中提出的第三种方式是基于协商的协作的的民主计划模型。它是民主的,这与中央集权国家的指令计划不同。 它是计划的,将其与资本主义国家的不稳定和缺乏有意识的社会目标的特征区分开来。 它以基于协商的协作为基础,将其与市场社会主义区分开来,市场社会主义是迄今为止提出的唯一实践过的作为第三种方式的替代模式。

In the most advanced modern capitalist countries political democracy has been won but not economic democracy. The political democracy so far achieved is of unparalleled historical importance but it is incomplete. It is primarily passive representative democracy in which most people elect others to act for them. The extent of active participation in self-government is very limited and in many countries the centralization of political power is increasing. Economic power remains highly concentrated and economic democracy, although now on the agenda, is still fragmentary and for the future.

在最先进的现代资本主义国家,政治民主已被赢得,但经济民主没有被实现。迄今为止取得的政治民主具有无可比拟的历史重要性,但它是不完整的。它主要是被动的代议制民主,其中大多数人选举其他人为他们采取行动。积极参与自我治理的程度是非常有限的,而在许多国家政治权力的集中化正在增长。经济权力仍然保持高度集中,经济民主虽然现在已列入议程,但仍然是零碎的,也是未来的。

Modern capitalism is not laissez-faire capitalism. The role of the state has increased inexorably during the twentieth century, notwithstanding the rediscovery of economic liberalism in the 1980s. Part of this process has involved attempts at economic planning, primarily during the two world wars but also in the period since the Second World War.

现代资本主义不是自由放任资本主义。 尽管在1980s重新发现了经济自由主义,但在二十世纪,政府的作用不可避免地增加了。 这一过程的一部分涉及经济计划的尝试,主要是在两次世界大战期间以及第二次世界大战以来的时期。

However, planning has been limited, partial and largely unsuccessful. By the 1980s attempts at national economic planning had been effectively abandoned and macroeconomic management was in crisis. High levels of unemployment and inflation, persistent inequality, acute social divisions, environmental problems, the effects of unplanned technical change, international economic instability – all suggested a social system out of control.

但是,计划是有限的,部分的,并且很大程度上是不成功的。 到1980s,国家经济计划的尝试已被有效的放弃,宏观经济管理陷入危机。 高失业率和通货膨胀,持续的不平等,严重的社会分裂,环境问题,无计划的技术变革的影响,国际经济的不稳定性—这些都表明社会制度失控了。

The statist societies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have centrally planned economies. Planning has enabled the mobilization of their human and material resources for the priority objectives of developing their backward economies and modernizing their societies. It has also enabled them to achieve full employment, low levels of inflation, and a more equal distribution of income than exists in capitalist countries at the same level of development. However, both political and economic power are highly centralized and neither political nor economic democracy exists in these societies.

苏联和东欧的中央集权社会有中央计划的经济。 计划使他们能够动员人力和物力资源,实现发展落后经济和社会现代化的优先目标。 它还使他们能够实现充分就业,低通胀水平和比同等发展水平的资本主义国家更平等的收入分配。 然而,政治和经济权力都是高度集中的,在这些社会中既不存在政治民主也不存在经济民主。

As the level of economic and social development has increased, the statist societies have experienced endemic and periodically acute crisis. The absence of political democracy has resulted in a series of political crises, most dramatically in Poland in 1980. The combined absence of political and economic democracy, in a context of full employment and command planning, has resulted in lack of dynamism, economic inefficiency and labour indiscipline. Repeated attempts to deal with these systemic problems by introducing economic reform had come to very little by the mid-1980s, apart perhaps from in Hungary. The advent of Gorbachev in 1985 ushered in a new era in which for the first time in the Soviet Union the connection between economic performance and democracy has been officially recognized.

随着经济和社会发展水平的提高,中央集权社会经历了地方性和周期性的严重危机。 政治民主的缺乏导致了一系列政治危机,1980年在波兰发生的政治危机是最大的。在充分就业和指令计划的背景下,政治和经济民主的缺失导致缺乏活力,经济效率低下和缺乏劳动纪律。通过引入经济改革来反复尝试处理这些系统性问题在1980s中期几乎没有,除了匈牙利之外。 1985年戈尔巴乔夫的到来开启了一个新时代,苏联第一次正式认识到经济表现与民主之间的联系。

In both East and West overcentralization, bureaucracy and the exercise of arbitrary state or private power are now widely acknowledged to be major problems. The threat to personal freedom from the concentration of political and sometimes economic power in the state, the paternalism of nationalized industries and welfare state provision, the inefficiency of statist command planning, the power and lack of social accountability of large corporations, have between them led to a search for ways of decentralizing political power and economic decision-making.

在东方和西方的过度集中化中,官僚主义和政府或私人权力的任意行使现在被广泛认为是主要问题。个人自由受到了政治的集中化和政府的经济权力的威胁,国有化产业和福利国家提供中的家长式作风,中央集权指令计划的低效率,大公司的权力过大和缺乏社会责任感等, 这些导致了对分散政治权力和经济决策的方式的寻找。

Market socialism, in varying forms, has been increasingly advocated by reformers in the East and socialists in the West as the only wayforward, the only viable third way. At a theoretical level the work of Lange (1938),Brus (1972) and Nove (1983) has been especially influential. At the level of historical experience the Yugoslav system of worker self-managed enterprises, whose activities are in principle coordinated by the market mechanism, is unique. There is also the Hungarian new economic mechanism, far less of a break with the command system than might appear and qualitatively different from the Yugoslav system.

东方的改革者们和西方的社会主义者们越来越多地倡导各种形式的市场社会主义,将其当成唯一可行的第三条道路。 在理论层面上,Lange(1938),Brus(1972)和Nove(1983)的工作尤其具有影响力。 在历史经验方面,南斯拉夫的工人自我管理企业制度,其活动原则上由市场机制协调,是独一无二的。 还有匈牙利的新经济机制,与指令系统和与南斯拉夫系统相比可能出现的质量差别要小得多。

The strongest argument for market sociallsm is that it is the only realistic, or feasible (Nave 1983), alternative to capitalism and, more particularly, to statist command planning. Its advocates accept that Yugoslavia has experienced the sort of economic instability and crisis more usually associated with the capitalist West and that Hungary’s economic performance has not been noticeably better than that of other statist countries. However, the absence of political democracy means that neither country fully qualifies as an example of the sort of system recommended by market socialists. In any case, no one would expect market socialism, or indeed any system, to be perfect. The question is: is there a better alternative? Is there another third way?

市场社会主义的最强有力论据是,它是唯一现实的,或可行的(Nave 1983)对资本主义的替代,更具体地说,是对中央集权的指令计划的替代。 它的拥护者接受南斯拉夫经历了比资本主义西方更频繁的经济不稳定和危机,而匈牙利的经济表现并没有明显优于其他中央集权国家。然而,政治民主的缺乏意味着这两个国家都没有完全符合市场社会主义者主张的那种制度。无论如何,没有人会认为市场社会主义或任何制度都是完美的。 问题是:有更好的选择吗? 还有第三条道路吗?

This book is an attempt to show that there is, by developing a model of democratic planning based on negotiated coordination. In my view there are two fundamental problems with the model of market socialism which mean that it cannot constitute the economic part of a realistic vision of a self-governing society based on political and economic pluralism. The first is contingent. The case for planning is that it enables the conscious shaping of economic activity, in accordance with individually and collectively determined needs, and it overcomes the instability that is an endemic empirical characteristic of market-based economies. So far, neither historical experience nor the state of theory gives any reason to suppose that market-based economies can be managed or regulated effectively enough to achieve these objectives.

本书尝试通过制定基于协商的协作的民主计划模型来证明第三条道路是存在的。在我看来,市场社会主义模式存在两个基本问题,这导致它不能构成基于政治和经济多元化的自我治理的现实社会愿景的经济部分。第一个是偶然性。计划的情况是,它能够根据个人和集体的确定的需求有意识地塑造经济活动,并且克服了市场经济的地方性经验特征造成的不稳定性。 到目前为止,历史经验和理论状态都没有给出任何理由支持基于市场的经济能够得到有效管理或监管以实现这些目标的假设。

Second, the invisible hand, even if it could be steadied to avoid instability and guided to achieve broad social objectives, necessarily operates through an appeal to narrow individual or sectional self-interest and the coercion of market forces. It thus reinforces individualism and atomization and precludes conscious participation by people in the taking of key decisions that affect their lives. This, in turn, has far-reaching implications for motivation and the possibilities for linking the present and the future through transformatory activity and experience.

第二,看不见的手即使可以被稳定以避免不稳定并被引导以实现广泛的社会目标,也必然通过呼吁缩小个人或部门的自身利益以及对市场力量的强制来实现。因此,它加强了个人主义和原子化,并阻碍了人们有意识地参与影响他们生活的关键决策。 反过来,这对动机和通过转型活动和经验将现在和未来联系起来的可能性产生了深远的影响。

The fact that I reject market socialism as a model for the future does not mean that I necessarily regret the attempts currently being made to increase the role of the market in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. In my view, as argued in chapter 5, these are not socialist societies but rather societies with a non-capitalist social formation constituting an alternative to capitalism as a means for creating the material and cultural preconditions for socialism. It may be that a greater role for the market will be part of the process of undermining the monolithic political power of the state in these countries and moving towards political democracy, undoubtedly the central challenge facing them.

我拒绝将市场社会主义作为未来模型的事实并不意味着我一定会对目前为增加苏联,东欧和中国市场的作用所做的努力而感到遗憾。在我看来,正如第5章所论述的那样,这些不是社会主义社会,而是具有非资本主义社会形态的社会,构成资本主义的替代,作为一种创造社会主义的物质和文化先决条件的手段。 市场的可能的更大作用将是破坏政府在这些国家中的整体政治权力并走向政治民主的过程的一部分,这无疑是他们面临的核心挑战。

以上来自1.1 Introduction,作者明确指出,基于协商的协作的民主计划经济是人民自我治理,自己决定自己的命运所必需的,同时作者也表现出了对市场机制的极度不信任,认为市场本身就是对民主的破坏。同时作者也明确说明了苏联和中国的指令经济模式既没有政治民主也没有经济民主,根本不是社会主义。

接下来看看作者支持民主计划经济的具体理由:

Within standard economic theory market failure is recognized as a reason for collective action in cases when atomized self-seeking individual action cannot achieve the objectives of the individuals involved, namely, when prisoners’ dilemma situations, externalities or public goods exist. In prisoners’ dilemma situations, atomized decision-making prevents decision-makers from taking account of interdependencies that affect the outcome. The result is an outcome that none of the decision-makers would have chosen had they been able to get together to reach an agreed decision. It has been suggested that such situations make sense of Rousseau’s notion of the general will, normally dismissed as a totalitarian concept by methodological individualists (Runciman and Sen 1965).

在标准经济理论中,市场失灵被认为是在原子化的自我追求的个人行为无法实现所涉及的个人目标的情况下而采取集体行动的原因,即当存在囚徒困境,外部性或公共物品时。在囚徒困境中,原子化的决策使决策者无法考虑所影响的结果的相互依赖性。结果是,如果他们能够聚在一起达成决定,那么决策者们都不会选择这样的结果。 有人认为,这种情况是卢梭关于公意的概念的体现,通常被方法论个人主义者贬低为极权主义概念(Runciman和Sen 1965)。(越来越大越来越疯狂的市场营销投入就是囚徒困境带来的恶果之一,结果是浪费了大量财富。)

Prisoners’ dilemma situations arise from the fact that in atomized decision-making people are by definition ignorant of the behaviour of others, yet to act effectively in their own narrow self-interest they need to know what the others are doing. In this they differ from situations in which externalities occur since externalities do not in principle arise from ignorance or uncertainty. Externalities exist because property rights are defined on too small a scale for the consequences of the use of property to be felt only by those who determine that use. They consist of costs or benefits that are not taken into account by narrowly self-interested decision-makers since some of the effects of using the property are borne by or benefit others. The extent and distribution of such external effects depend on the distribution of property rights. Externalities are the theoretical basis for the standard distinction between private and social costs and benefits.

囚徒困境源于这样一个事实,即在原子化的决策中,人们根本不了解别人的行为,然而为了在他们自己狭隘的自身利益中有效行动,他们需要知道其他人在做什么。在这方面,它们与外部性发生的情况不同,因为外部性原则上不是由无知或不确定性引起的。 存在外部性是因为产权的定义规模太小,只有确定使用的人才能感受到财产使用的后果。它们包括狭隘的自利决策者未考虑的成本或收益,因为使用财产的某些影响是由他人承担或使他人受益。这种外部影响的程度和分布取决于产权的分配。外部性是私人和社会成本与收益之间进行标准区分的理论基础。(最典型的外部性案例就是环境污染,私人独裁企业为了利润最大化,拒绝处理污染物,把环境成本扔给普通人,特别是穷人去承担。)

Finally, there is the case for the collective provision of public goods. These are goods and services with two characteristics: first, everyone is affected by them, whether or not they are prepared to pay for them or want them, that is, no one can be excluded from their effects; and, second, their use by one person does not diminish their availability for use by others. The classic examples are law and order and defence. However, the concept of public goods can be extended to embrace collective provision contributing to the general fabric and ethos of a society, ranging from the prevailing level of education and standard of public health to a sense of solidarity and community.

最后,集体提供公共产品的情况也是如此。 这些是具有两个特征的产品和服务:首先,每个人都受到它们的影响,无论他们是否准备为它们付钱或想要它们,也就是说,没有人可以被排除在它们的影响之外; 第二,一个人使用它们并不会减少别人使用时的可用性。经典的例子是法律和秩序以及防御。 然而,公共产品的概念可以扩展到包括对社会有帮助的一般构造和思想的集体供给,从普遍水平的教育和公共卫生标准到感觉到团结和社区。(人权也是一种公共产品,必须也只能由民主的公有机构,也就是政府来提供。)

National decisions are likely to include: the rates of growth and investment, and therefore the overall balance between investment and consumption; the allocation of investment for the major expansion of key existing industries and the creation of new industries; the distribution of investment between regions; energy and transport policy; policy towards pollution control, environmental protection and resource conservation; the balance between individual household consumption and collective social provision; the distribution of personal income and a corresponding incomes policy; the coverage and character of social provision, including education and training, recreation, housing, health, social services and social security; science and research policy, in particular the sort of innovation to be encouraged; and the priority to be given to the promotion of more human social relations.

国家决策可能包括:增长率和投资率,以及投资和消费之间的总体平衡; 为了重点扩大现有主要产业和创造新产业而进行的投资分配; 区域间的投资分配; 能源和运输政策; 污染控制,环境保护和资源保护政策; 个人家庭消费与集体社会供给之间的平衡; 个人收入的分配和相应的收入政策; 社会供应的范围和性质,包括教育和培训,娱乐,住房,健康,社会服务和社会保障; 科学和研究政策,特别是鼓励创新; 并优先考虑促进更多的人类社会关系。

Of course, most of these issues are not left to the spontaneous workings of the invisible hand in modern capitalism. They are decided by the interaction of state policies, decisions of the large corporations and the struggles of the labour movement and other organized interest groups. Within this interaction, however, the private sector is favourably placed to dominate the outcome because of what Lindblom has called ‘the privileged position of business’ (Lindblom 1977, ch. 13). This privilege arises from the need for governments to create an environment that will induce the private sector to perform satisfactorily. It is supplemented by the economic power of business which gives it preferential access to the decision-making institutions and processes of the state.

当然,大多数这些问题并不是由现代资本主义中看不见的手的自发运作所决定的。它们取决于政府政策的相互作用,大公司的决策以及劳工运动和其他有组织的利益集团的斗争。然而,在这种互动中,由于Lindblom称谓的“商业的特权地位”(Lindblom 1977,第13章),私有机构有利于处在主宰结果的位置上。这种特权源于政府需要创造一种环境以促使私有机构取得令人满意的成绩。它还得到了商业经济权力的补充,使其能够优先进入政府的决策机构和进程中。

If the private sector becomes too discontented with government policies there will be what may be called a capital strike or, in an international context, a flight of capital. For macroeconomic performance, the structure of resource allocation and the general direction of development of the economy to be determined democratically requires a fundamental redistribution of economic and political power. That is why socialists have historically sought the abolition of exploitation and private ownership and the abolition or democratization of the state. A redistribution of economic power is also a precondition for a more equal distribution of income, since investment would then no longer be motivated by the pursuit of unearned income accruing to private capital ownership.

如果私有机构对政府政策过于不满,那么可能会出现所谓的资本攻击,或者在国际范围内,会出现资本外逃。对于宏观经济表现而言,资源分配结构和经济发展总体方向的民主确定需要对经济和政治权力的根本的重新分配。 这就是为什么社会主义者历来寻求废除剥削和私有制以及废除国家或民主化国家。经济权力的再分配也是进行更平等的收入分配的先决条件,因为投资将不再受到追求私人资本所有权的未实现收入的驱动。

以上来自1. 4 The Case for Planning,作者描述了资本主义带来的恶果(囚徒困境,对外部性的忽视,公共服务的缺乏以及私有独裁资本对民主的威胁),而基于协商的协作民主计划经济会克服这些恶果。

接下来再来看看作者对民主计划经济模式的设想:

Although capitalist countries do not have planned economies there are elements of planning to be found in them from which we can learn. These elements, discussed in the next chapter, are concerned primarily with ways of modifying the operation of market forces and the consequences of uncoordinated decision-making. Economic planning, however, is normally associated with the statist countries. The rapid rate of economic development in the Soviet Union during the 1930s is evidence of the formidable ability of its centralized command planning system to mobilize and concentrate resources. The experience of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe until recently in maintaining full employment and avoiding inflation suggests the different order of control over an economy made possible by planning. Much can be learned from the experience of statist planning, which is discussed in chapter 3. Yet the absence of democracy, the human cost involved and the mounting problems now evident suggest that the lessons are as much negative as positive.

虽然资本主义国家没有计划经济,但我们可以从中学到计划的元素。下一章讨论的这些要素主要涉及改变市场力量运作的方式以及不协作决策的后果。然而,经济计划通常与中央集权国家有关。1930s苏联经济的快速发展证明了其集中的指令计划系统动员和集中资源的强大能力。直到最近苏联和东欧维持充分就业和避免通货膨胀的经验表明,通过计划可以实现对经济的不同秩序的控制。从第3章讨论的中央集权计划的经验中可以学到很多东西。然而,民主的缺乏,人的成本和现在越来越多的问题表明,这些教训中积极的和消极的一样多。

What is needed is a form of democratic planning combining centrally taken decisions where necessary with decentralized decision-making wherever possible. Market socialism, discussed in chapter 4, is widely held to be the only way in which this can be achieved. Regulated market socialism, its advocates claim, would dispense with capitalist social relations and thus enable market forces to be harnessed to planning. I believe, on the contrary, that the argument developed in the previous section establishes a strong prima facie case against the possibility of using the market mechanism as an instrument of planning.

我们需要的是一种民主计划形式,在必要时将必要的集中决策与分散决策相结合。 第4章讨论的市场社会主义被广泛认为是实现这一目标的唯一途径。 其支持者声称,受管制的市场社会主义将消灭资本主义的社会关系,从而使市场力量能够被用于计划。 相反,我认为,上一节中提出的论点确立了一个强有力的表面证据,就是反对将市场机制作为计划工具的可能性。

I wish to distinguish between market exchange, on the one hand, and market forces, or the invisible hand, or the anarchy of production, on the other. By these latter terms I mean a process whereby change occurs in the pattern of investment, in the structure of productive capacity, in the relative size of different industries, in the geographical distribution of economic activity, in the size and even the existence of individual production units, as a result of atomized decisions, independently taken, motivated solely by the individual decision-makers’ perceptions of their individual self-interest, not consciously coordinated by them in advance. It is to this process that I am referring when I argue against the use of market forces or the market mechanism as an instrument of economic planning. 9

我希望区分市场交换和市场力量,或看不见的手,或生产的无政府状态。在后面的术语中,我指的是一种进程,在这种进程中,投资模式,生产能力结构,不同行业的相对规模,经济活动的地理分布,个体生产的规模甚至存在都会发生变化。个体生产单位作为原子化决策的结果,独立地采取,仅由个体决策者对其个人自身利益的看法所驱动,而不是事先由他们一起有意识地协作。 当我反对使用市场力量或市场机制作为经济计划工具时,我指的是这个过程。9

No contemporary model of planning, whether statist, regulated market socialist or the model of negotiated coordination developed in Part IV, incorporates the direction of labour or the rationing or free distribution of all consumer goods. The continued existence of labour markets, in which people agree to participate in production in exchange for income, and of consumer markets, in which consumer goods and services are bought and sold, is not at issue. At issue between statist and regulated market socialist models is whether all decisions affecting the activities of production units are taken centrally and communicatedvertically downwards as instructions or whether some decisions are arrived at by horizontal interaction. At issue between regulated market socialist models and the model of negotiated coordination is whether horizontal interaction must necessarily involve market forces, the market mechanism.

没有现代的计划模式,无论是国家主义者,受监管的市场社会主义者还是第四部分制定的谈判协调模式,都包含了劳动力的方向或所有消费品的配给或自由分配。 劳动力市场的持续存在,其中人们同意参与生产以换取收入,以及消费者市场,其中购买和销售消费品和服务,这些都不是问题。 在中央集权和受监管的市场社会主义模型之间的问题在于,所有影响生产单位活动的决策是否作为指示进行集中和传播,或者是否通过横向互动得出某些决策。 受监管的市场社会主义模式与基于协商的协作模型之间的问题在于,横向互动是否必然涉及市场力量,即市场机制。

At the moment, in all economies, most transactions between enterprises are based on an established pattern of horizontal relationships which are only reassessed when they cease to satisfy the requirements of those involved. 10 These relationships are between producers and users and in market economies constitute what I have called above market exchange. Change in the established pattern resulting from reassessment typically involves negotiation. The model of negotiated coordination is a qualitative development of this existing reality. In it, such horizontal relationships and reassessments continue to be the basis of transactions concerned with current production, that is, most transactions. However, the crucial difference by comparison with market economies is that negotiation is extended to embrace relationships between enterprises in the same branch of production when changes in capacity are at issue. Thus, while market exchange exists market forces do not.

目前,在所有经济体中,企业之间的大多数交易都是基于既定的横向关系模式,只有当它们不再满足相关人员的要求时才会被重新评估。 10这些关系是生产者和使用者之间的关系,市场经济构成了我称为市场交换的存在。重新评估产生的既定模式的变化通常涉及协商。基于协商的协作模式是对现有现实的性质上的发展。其中,这种横向关系和重新评估仍然是与当前生产有关的交易的基础,也就是说,绝大多数交易。然而,与市场经济相比的关键差异在于,当出现产能变化问题时,谈判扩展到包括同一生产部门中的企业之间的关系。因此,虽然市场交换存在,但市场力量却不存在。

This crucial difference enables decisions about changes in the size of production units and branches of production, about investment or contraction, to be coordinated in advance. It enables decentralizationof routine, day-to-day decisions to be combined with coordinated decision-making when significant interdependence is present. Thus, when decisions potentially affecting the future of individual workplaces and communities are being taken, those potentially affected can participate consciously in taking them. In this way, negotiated coordination, unlike command planning instruction and market force coercion, creates the possibility for people consciously to transform their perceptions, values and motivation by confronting their own interests with those of others and seeking a resolution. As is elaborated in Part IV, the process of negotiated coordination can be generalized to incorporate all interests affected by major decisions and to cover all major decisions affecting people’s lives. The interests participating in negotiation can be constituted narrowly or broadly, involving more or less (de )centralization, according to the issue. 11

这种至关重要的差异使得能够提前对关于生产单位和生产部门的规模变化,投资或收缩的决定进行协作。它使分散的日常决策与当存在显着的相互依赖时的协作决策相结合。因此,当正在考虑可能影响个人工作场所和社区未来的决策时,那些可能受影响的人可以有意识地参与其中。通过这种方式,与指令计划指示和市场力量强制不同的是,基于协商的协作为人们创造了通过将自己的利益与他人的利益一起考虑并寻求解决方案而有意识地改变其观念,价值观和动机的可能性。正如第四部分所阐述的那样,谈判协调的过程可以概括为包含受重大决定影响的所有利益,并覆盖影响人们生活的所有重大决策。根据这个问题,参与谈判的利益可以狭义或广泛地构成,或多或少地(集中)集中化。 11

It will, I hope, be clear that the model of negotiated coordination is not based on the assumption of perfect knowledge or optimality. In relation to neoclassical theory’s ‘myopic concentration on problems of marginal adjustment’, Dobb has referred to the ‘Perfectibility Fallacy’ (Dobb 1970b, p. 121). In Ellman’s view, the waste and inefficiency of statist planning arise because it is based on the false assumption of ‘a perfect knowledge, deterministic world, in which unique perfect plans can be drawn up for the present and the future’ (Ellman 1979, p. 73). More generally, Lindblom has distinguished between two models, with different assumptions about the nature of social reality: Model 1, based on the possibility of perfectibility and the scientific discovery of correct solutions in the interests of all – the paternalist model; and Model 2, based on the permanence of fallibility and on preference-guided choice through a process of social interaction – the pluralist model (Lindblom 1977, ch. 19).

我希望,它将清楚地表明,基于协商的协作模式不是基于完美知识或最优性的假设。关于新古典主义理论的“近视的集中于边际调整问题”,Dobb 提到了“完美主义谬误”(Dobb 1970b,p.121)。在Ellman看来,中央集权计划的浪费和低效率的出现是因为它基于一个关于”完美的知识,确定的世界,其中可以为现在和未来制定独特的完美计划”的错误假设(Ellman 1979,p .73)。更一般地说,Lindblom区分了两种模型,针对社会现实的本质有不同的假设:模型1,基于完美性的可能性和为科学发现所有人的利益提供正确的解决方案—家长式模型;和模型2,基于易犯错误的永久性和基于对社会互动过程的偏好引导选择—多元模型(Lindblom 1977,ch.19)。

The process of negotiated coordination in my model has similarities with the ‘social processes or interactions that substitute for conclusive analysis’ in Lindblom’s Model 1(Lindblom1977, p. 253). However, in the economic sphere, although not unaware of the problems associated with private property and atomized decision-making, Lindblom espouses the market mechanism as the way of organizing preference-guided, pluralist social interaction. He sometimes also gives the impression of underestimating the role that knowledge and reason can and should play in the process of self-determining, self-governing democratic decisio-making. My model of negotiated coordination is not based on perfectibility, whether of knowledge or solutions, but it is based on a belief in reason and in the possibility of transformation and progress.

我的模型中基于协商的协作的进程与Lindblom模型1中的“社会过程或相互作用取代结论性分析”相似(Lindblom1977,第253页)。 然而,在经济领域,虽然并未意识到与私有财产和原子化决策相关的问题,但Lindblom支持市场机制作为组织偏好引导的多元社会互动的方式。 他有时也给人的印象是低估了知识和理性可以也应该在自我决定的和自我治理的民主决策过程中发挥作用。 我的谈判协调模式不是基于完美性,无论是知识还是解决方案,而是基于对理性的信念以及转型和进步的可能性。

第二部分是分析资本主义国家和中央集权国家的计划经济案例,例如英国二战时期的计划经济,凯恩斯主义的宏观经济计划,英国和法国二战后的对工业发展的指示,日本的工业计划和保护主义模式,以及苏联和东欧的指令经济模式,还有匈牙利和南斯拉夫的市场社会主义尝试。限于篇幅我这里就不再具体介绍了,诸位自己去阅读吧。

第三部分介绍了作者打算用民主计划经济模式实现的目标,有社会化生产,政治民主(包括直接的参与式民主),经济民主,最终消灭劳动的社会分工,让每个人都能平等的做自己想做的工作,而作者最终的设想是这样的:

 

这张图里的英语很简单,所以我就不翻译了,诸位自己看吧。

第四部分具体讲述了作者的民主计划经济方案:

这是国家层面的方案,国家计划委员会下属有三个机构:部门协调机构,主要投资机构,地方分配机构。部门协调机构负责和地方计划委员会以及生产单元们(生产单元由工人们民主控制)进行基于协商的协作,协调生产单元们之间的问题;而主要投资机构则是负责民主的协商投资;地方分配机构则是和地方协商,对国家控制的资源进行民主分配。所有这些机构的作用都是协助人民民主的进行决策,任何被影响到的人民都有权参与协商决策,当然它们本身也是被民选议会控制的(甚至本地可以实现直接的参与式民主控制。)

这是地方(省一级)层面的方案,地方计划委员会一方面是国家计划委员会以及地方代表议会的下属,地方代表议会同时也下属地方利益机构。另一方面也和国家计划委员会一样下属三个机构:地方部门协调机构,主要投资机构,本地分配机构,这三个机构的功能也和国家层面的三个对应机构一样,只是范围局限在地方。

 

这是本地(城市,小镇,乡村)层面的方案,本地计划委员会一边是国家和地方的计划委员会和本地代表议会的下属(本地代表议会也下属本地利益机构),和地方进行民主协作,另一边则是和生产单元以及小规模活动进行直接的民主协商。

这是生产单元层面的方案,工人们通过工会或者直接与消费者们以及其他生产单元或协作机构或社区民主的进行协商,然后根据协商结果制定生产计划,再进行生产。

最后作者进行了总结:

Thus, the central requirement for advance to a self-governing society of equal subjects is movement towards more equal access to the material and psychological resources necessary for self-development. Abolition of the social division of labour is the precondition for ending the oldest forms of oppression and inequality, between men and women and between mental and manual labour. It is also a precondition for achieving global ecological balance, since the end of subalternity and alienation will enable people to transform their unconscious need for compensatory consumption into a conscious need for emancipatory activity. If capitalism and statism have today in their different ways created the objective and subjective possibilities for advance to socialism, communism and self-government, it is up to us to decide whether to act on those possibilities, whether to draw on the internal and external resources available to us to transform both our circumstances and ourselves.

因此,推进平等主体自我治理社会的核心要求是更加平等地获得自我发展所需的物质和心理资源。 废除社会分工是结束存在于男女之间以及脑力和体力劳动之间最古老的压迫和不平等形式的先决条件。 这也是实现全球生态平衡的先决条件,因为等级压迫和异化的结束将使人们能够将他们对补偿性消费的无意识需求转变为对解放活动的有意识的需求。 如果资本主义和中央集权今天以不同的方式创造了推进社会主义,共产主义和自我治理的客观和主观可能性,那么我们有责任决定是否采取行动,是否利用内部和外部资源。以改变我们的外部环境和我们自己。

If we decide to do so, we have to find ways of going beyond reliance on the operation of impersonal market forces for the coordination of our economic activity. The model of democratic planning through negotiated coordination outlined in Part IV is an attempt to show that this is possible without recourse to administrative command planning. It is an attempt to demonstrate that there is a third way that is both realistic and yet has a transformatory dynamic. The only other third way that has been proposed, regulated market socialism, is neither realistic nor transformatory. It is based on an internally inconsistent political economy in which people undertake economic activity on thebasis of narrow self-interest yet regulate themselves by non-narrowly self-interested political action in the social interest. Democratic planning through negotiated coordination, by contrast, is a model that offers us the possibility of taking responsibility for our lives and in so doing transforming ourselves.

如果我们决定这么做,我们必须找到超越依赖非个人市场力量运作来协调我们的经济活动的方法。第四部分概述的通过基于协商的协作进行民主计划的模式尝试表明这可以不借助行政命令计划实现。它试图证明第三条道路既现实又具有变革动力。唯一被实践过的第三种方式,即管制市场的社会主义,既不现实也不革命。它建立在内部不一致的政治经济基础之上,人们在狭隘的自身利益的基础上开展经济活动,并通过社会利益中的非狭隘自利的政治行动来约束自己。相反,通过基于协商的协作进行的民主计划是一种模式,它使我们有可能对我们的生活负责,从而改变我们自己。

Movement towards democratic planning and a self-governing society requires political action informed by a hegemonic political strategy. Without the development of autonomous, self-governing groups in civil society, struggling to assert their interests in relation to the state and the economy, there can be no progress. Without such groups finding the way to transform their existing subaltern, sectional, consciousness into hegemonic, overall, consciousness, there can be no challenge to the dominant position of the ruling hegemonic group. Transformatory political action has to be informed by a credible vision of a better society. One of the factors inhibiting such action has been the crisis of the traditional socialist vision, not least the loss of confidence in the possibility of combining freedom and democracy with planning. I hope that the model of democratic planning through negotiated coordination will contribute to thinking about how, particularly in relation to the economy, optimism about the possibility of a better society can be combined with realism about how people are and what we can become, what together we can make of ourselves.

实现民主计划和自我治理的社会的运动需要以占主导的政治策略为依据的政治行动。如果没有公民社会中的自治的,自我治理的团体的发展,努力维护这些人自己与政权和与经济相关的利益,就没有进步。如果没有这样的团体找到将他们现有的下层的,部分的,无意识的转变为主导的,整体的,有意识的方法,那么就不会有任何对统治霸权集团的主导地位的挑战。转型政治行动必须了解更美好社会的可信愿景。阻碍这种行动的因素之一是传统社会主义愿景的危机,尤其是丧失对通过计划将自由与民主相结合的可能性的信心。我希望通过协商协作的民主计划模式将有助于思考如何做,特别是在经济方面,对更好的社会的可能性的乐观可以与关于人是怎样的和我们可以成为什么的现实主义相结合,我们可以在一起塑造我们自己。

作者的设想比较理想化,相比市场社会主义的主张,作者的主张离现实更遥远(如果说市场社会主义主张大政府,那么Pat Devine主张的就是超级政府),但作为一种思路还是不错的。毕竟我们不能由着那些霸占生产资料和资本的独裁者们胡作非为,对吧?

社会主义者辨别指南

如何判断一个人是不是社会主义者?对于这一问题,社会主义者内部都没有一个公认的答案(苦笑),因为社会主义内部的分支实在太多了,还有挂羊头卖狗肉的毛派四处捣乱。

但我可以以一个民主社会主义者的角度写一个辨别指南,这一指南由一系列问题组成,其中有关键问题,也有非关键问题,注意,只有在关键问题上的答案都是社会主义的,一个人才有资格自称社会主义者。同时我也会指出相反的答案代表哪类人,现在开始:

问题1(关键):你是否支持任何形式的种族主义?

社会主义者的答案:任何情况任何场合下都不会支持,坚决反对种族主义。

支持种族主义的:极右纳粹。

问题2(关键):你是否支持福利国家(政府公费提供教育医疗住房养老生育补贴儿童福利社会化抚养),认为市场需要被监管(例如控制房价和地价,禁止炒房)?

社会主义者的答案:福利国家是基本人权,市场绝不能自由。

反对福利国家,支持自由市场的:右派和部分极右(还有部分极右嘴上支持福利国家,但上台之后就不认账了)。

问题3(关键):你是否认为资本主义的本质是资本家剥削劳工?

社会主义者的答案:是。

回答否的:右派和极右。

问题4(关键):你是否支持经济民主(支持经济民主等同于否定私有制)?

社会主义者的答案:支持,对生产资料和资本的私人独裁占有必须被终结。

回答不支持的:右派和极右。

问题5(关键):你是否支持捍卫性少数群体的人权?(例如同性婚姻,通过禁止歧视法律,免费提供相应医疗护理,禁止任何形式的古拉格“矫正中心”)

社会主义者的答案:支持。

回答不支持的:极右纳粹。

问题6(关键):你是否认为国家只是阶级统治的工具,而民族则是想象出的虚幻的共同体?

社会主义者的答案:是,国家和民族都需要消失。

回答否的:国族主义者(纳粹的一种)。

问题7(关键):你认为怎样才是你理想中的政治民主?

社会主义者的答案:我不会局限于代议制民主,我认为应尽可能推行参与式民主(直接民主),我们也不需要局限于政党政治,关键是人民民主的选出其意志的代行者。

直接否定政治民主的:精英主义者,五毛狗,纳粹;停留在代议制民主和政党政治的:右派。

问题8(关键):你支持工人运动和劳工权利(罢工权,集体谈判权,组建独立工会权)吗?

社会主义者:支持。

反对的:右派和极右。

问题9(关键):你怎么看待法律,警察和犯罪?

社会主义者:法律是统治阶级的工具,警察是剥削阶级的打手,犯罪是一种无效的阶级斗争。

认为法律是完全公正毫无倾向的:法匠,右派。认为犯罪只能靠警察镇压的:右派和极右。

问题10(关键):你是否支持女权(反对性侵犯,支持堕胎权,反对工作领域对女性的排斥,反对家庭暴力),反对专偶制婚姻制度?

社会主义者:支持女权,反对压迫女性的专偶制婚姻制度。

反对女权者:父权纳粹。支持女权也支持专偶制婚姻制度者:进步右派。

问题11(关键):你如何看待精神病人?

社会主义者:他们或她们和其他病人一样,需要帮助。

敌视精神病人者:纳粹。

问题12(非关键):你如何看待使用药物?

社会主义者:有些(例如我)认为使用药物是个人自由,有些认为药物需要被管制,但社会主义者的共识是吸毒不是犯罪,而是被剥削压迫的结果。

污名化吸毒者的:右派和极右。

问题13(关键):你是否反对任何政府发动的任何形式任何理由的侵略和殖民(包括经济殖民)?

社会主义者:洋人和皇帝都要滚。

反对皇帝但欢迎洋人的:帝国主义者,种族主义支黑。都欢迎的:奴才。

问题14(关键):你是否认为儿童是一个独立自主的人?

社会主义者:是,儿童有权选择自己的道路,父母无权控制奴役儿童。

把儿童当成父母私产者:部分右派和极右。

问题15(关键):你是否支持被压迫的民族自决独立?

社会主义者:支持。

反对者:国族主义纳粹。

问题16(关键):你如何看待宗教?

社会主义者:宗教是剥削阶级奴役人民的工具,政教分离是必须的,宗教绝不能干预世俗政治,教徒无权强迫其他任何人遵循其教义。

支持政教合一宗教干预政治者:原教旨信徒,纳粹。

问题17(关键):你如何看待穆斯林?

社会主义者:伊斯兰教的教义是典型的私有制父权压迫糟粕,问题非常大,但现在很多纳粹故意煽动对穆斯林的仇恨,撒了无数谎,那么我们也有必要为穆斯林说几句公道话。

仇穆十字军:基督徒,纳粹。

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Transport Should Be Free(公共交通应当免费)

写在前面:公共交通是基本人权,当然应该免费

We don’t put coins in street lamps or pay by the minute in public parks. Here’s why we should make subway and bus fares a thing of the past.

我们不会把硬币放在路灯上或在公园里按分钟付款。 这就是为什么我们应该让地铁和公共汽车票成为过去。

f we are to believe transport experts and practitioners, abolishing fares for all passengers is the last thing public transport operators should be doing. For Alan Flausch, an ex-CEO of the Brussels public transport authority and current Secretary General of International Association of Public Transport, “in terms of mobility, free public transport is absurd.”According to Vincent Kauffmann, a professor at University of Lausanne and one of key figures in sustainable mobility, “free public transport does not make any sense.” Getting rid of tickets in mass transit is judged “irrational,” “uneconomical” and “unsustainable.”如果我们相信交通专家和从业者,取消所有乘客的车票是公共交通运营商最不应该做的事。 对于布鲁塞尔公共交通管理局前任首席执行官兼现任国际公共交通协会秘书长 Alan Flausch来说,“在活动性方面,免费公共交通是荒谬的。”根据洛桑大学教授,可持续交通的关键人物之一Vincent Kauffmann的说法,“免费公共交通没有任何意义。”在公共交通中取消车票被认为是“非理性的”,“不经济的”和“不可持续的”“。

However, if we turn to commentators from outside the field of transport, the perspective on fare abolition changes radically. Social scientists, activists, journalists and public officials—often speaking from cities where fare abolition has actually been put to the test—fervently defend the measure.

但是,如果我们转向交通领域以外的评论者,那么关于取消车票的观点就会发生根本变化。 社会科学家们,活动家们,记者们和公务员们—经常来自那些实地测试废除车票的的城市—热切地捍卫这项措施。

For Judith Dellheim, a researcher at Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung in Berlin, providing free access to public transport is the “first step towards socio-ecological transformation.” For Michiel Van Hulten, one of the earliest proponents of free public transport in Europe, “it is about returning to the commons.” Finally, according to Naomi Klein, this is precisely what cities around the world should be doing —“to really respond to the urgency of climate change, public transport would have to become free.”

对于柏林的罗莎 – 卢森堡基金会研究员Judith Dellheim而言,提供免费公共交通服务是“迈向社会生态转型的第一步。”对于欧洲最早的免费公共交通支持者之一Michiel Van Hulten来说,“ 它是关于回归公地的。“最后,根据Naomi Klein的说法,这正是全世界的城市应该做的事情 – ”为了真正应对紧迫的气候变化,公共交通必须变得免费。

Fare-Free Experiments

免车票实验

In spite of the controversy that it apparently creates, the number of cities experimenting with fare-free public transport (FFPT) is on the rise. In 1980, there were only six. By 2000, the number had grown to fifty-six. Today, FFPT exists in “full” form in at least ninety-six cities and towns around the world. Full fare abolition means that ticket-free rides are available for the vast majority of local public transport routes and services, for the vast majority of users, and for most of the time. In at least 138 other cities, fares are suspended in a partial way — either in specific city areas or modes of transport, or in specific periods of the day or year.

尽管它显然存在争议,但试验免费公共交通(FFPT)的城市数量正在增加。 1980年,只有六个。 到2000年,这一数字已增至56个。 今天,FFPT在全世界至少九十六个城市和小镇中以“完整”的形式存在着。 全车票取消意味着绝大多数本地公共交通路线和服务,绝大多数用户在大多数时间内都可以免费乘坐。在至少138个其他城市,车票以部分方式暂停发售——或者是在特定的城市地区还是在运输方式,或在一天或一年的特定时期内。

The United States is where the first reported case of full FFPT system occurred — in 1962 in the town of Commerce, in the Los Angeles suburbs — and where most FFPT programs could be found throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. At that time, the proponents of fare abolition in North America relied on social and political arguments, pointing to the anticipated social benefits of abolishing fares, and claiming that zeroing out fares could help increase the use of public transport and counter the high investment in automobile infrastructure.

美国是第一个报告了完整FFPT系统案例的地方 ——1962年在洛杉矶郊区的商业镇—并且大多数FFPT计划可以在整个1970s,1980s和1990s找到。当时,在北美取消车票的支持者依赖社会和政治争论,指出取消车票的预期社会效益,并声称将票价归零有助于增加公共交通的使用率并对抗汽车所需要的的高投资的基础设施。

The largest cases of that time — now discontinued — were located in Mercer County (New Jersey) and Denver (Colorado). Today, FFPT exists in twenty-seven localities across the United States: small urban/rural areas (e.g. Edmund, Oklahoma; Kootenai County, Idaho), university campuses (Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Macomb, Illinois) and natural parks and tourist resorts (Crested Butte and Estes Park, both Colorado).

当时最大的案例—现已停产—分别位于默瑟县(新泽西州)和丹佛(科罗拉多州)。今天,FFPT存在于美国各地的27个地区:小城市/农村地区(例如埃德蒙,俄克拉荷马州;科特奈县,爱达荷州),大学校园(北卡罗来纳州教堂山;伊利诺伊州马科姆)以及自然公园和旅游胜地 (Crested Butte和Estes Park,都在科罗拉多州)

The first European experiment with abolishing fares began in 1971 in Colomiers, in the suburbs of Toulouse (France), and was soon followed by Rome and Bologna. Perhaps the most renowned historic case of fare abolition is that of Hasselt, in Belgium. Faced with the problem of high traffic congestion, its mayor declared in 1996 that “we don’t need new roads, we need new ideas.” Hasselt dropped plans for constructing a new ring road and instead eliminated fares and reformed the network of collective transport, giving it clear priority. Increases in operational costs and changes in the local government have subsequently led to the cancellation of Hasselt’s fare-free policy in 2014.

1971年,在图卢兹(法国)郊区的Colomiers开始了第一次取消车票的欧洲试验,很快罗马和博洛尼亚紧随其后。也许最着名的废除车票的历史案例是比利时的哈瑟尔特。 面对高度交通堵塞的问题,其市长在1996年宣称“我们不需要新的道路,我们需要新的想法。”哈瑟尔特放弃了建造新环路的计划,取而代之的是取消了车票并改革了集体运输网络 ,明确给予其优先地位。运营成本的增加和当地政府的变化随后导致2014年哈瑟尔的无车票政策的取消。

Ever since the 2000s, a plethora of fare-free systems emerged in Europe, where most (fifty-six) of the world’s cases of full FFPT are found. A particularly large number of them are located in Poland (twenty-one, all of which have emerged since 2010) and France (twenty). Many European municipalities justify FFPT as a strategy for reducing car usage (e.g. Avesta, Sweden; Bełchatów, Poland) and car-related pollution and noise (Tórshavn, Faroe Islands). In many towns, socio-political arguments are used: FFPT is explicitly conceived as a social policy aiming at helping disadvantaged groups (as in Lubin, Poland; Colomiers and Compiègne, France), or as an attempt to re-define collective transport as common good (Aubagne, France; Mława, Poland).

自2000s以来,欧洲出现了大量免车票的系统,其中发现了全世界大多数(56个)的FFPT案例。 其中特别多的是波兰(二十一个,自2010年开始出现)和法国(二十个)。 许多欧洲市政当局将FFPT作为减少汽车使用的策略(例如瑞典的Avesta;波兰的Bełchatów)以及与汽车相关的污染和噪音(Tórshavn,Faroe Islands)。 在许多城镇,这一社会政治观点被使用:FFPT被明确地视为目标为帮助弱势群体的社会政策(如波兰的卢宾; 法国的Colomiers和Compiègne),或者试图将集体交通重新定义为公共服务(法国欧巴涅;波兰姆瓦瓦)。

The geography of fare abolition thus embraces small or mid-sized towns with less than one hundred thousand inhabitants. Most of them rarely make the news — have you ever heard of Kościerzyna or Vitré, Hallstahammar or Lugoj, Velenje or Akureyri? An important exception is Tallinn, the Estonian capital, which is the largest city (430,000 inhabitants) to currently host a ticket-free program, providing a strong argument that FFPT can work in a larger urban areas.

因此,废除车票的地理位置包括居民不到十万的中小镇。他们中的大多数人很少在新闻中出现—你有没有听说过Kościerzyna或Vitré,Hallstahammar或Lugoj,Velenje或Akureyri? 爱沙尼亚的首都塔林是一个重要的例外,它是目前拥有免车票项目的最大城市(430,000居民),提供了一个强有力的论据,即FFPT可以在更大的城市地区工作。

Still, transport experts seem convinced that fare abolition is irrational, senseless, and irresponsible. How to understand the fact that it nonetheless exists in nearly a hundred cities worldwide? Below I turn to the debate, and illustrate some of the arguments with examples from actually existing FFPT programs in Tallinn (Estonia) and Aubagne (France). The choice of these cities is not accidental; each of them is important in studying FFPT. Aubagne, located in the suburbs of Marseille, is among the most widely discussed cases of fare abolition in France, an important centre of FFPT. Tallinn, meanwhile, promotes itself as “the capital of free public transport,” and is actively promoting this policy domestically and abroad.

尽管如此,交通专家们似乎确信废除票价是不合理的,毫无意义的,和不负责任的。 如何理解它仍然存在于全球近百个城市中? 下面我将开始辩论,并用塔林(爱沙尼亚)和欧巴涅(法国)这些实际存在的FFPT计划的例子说明一些论点。选择这些城市并非偶然; 他们中间的每一个在研究FFPT时都很重要。位于马赛郊区的Aubagne是FFPT重要中心—在法国被最广泛讨论的废除车票的案例之一。与此同时,塔林将自己宣传为“免费公共交通之都”,并积极在国内外推广这一政策。

Harmful and Irrational?

有害的和不理性的?

Most transport academics and practitioners discuss FFPT in terms of its utility, efficiency, and contribution to economic growth (or lack thereof). The idea of abolishing fares is criticized for threatening the financial stability of public transport networks. Free access to buses and trams eliminates revenue from tickets while increasing the cost of maintaining security and responding to higher passenger demand. As a transport official from Montpellier (France) explains, zeroing fares is a policy that “deprives public transport of resources essential for its development.” Furthermore, according to many transport engineers and economists, public transport should function as a self-funded or for-profit agency subject to market mechanisms.

大多数交通学者和从业者在其效用,效率和对经济增长(或缺乏经济增长)的贡献方面讨论FFPT。 废除车票的想法因威胁公共交通网络的金融稳定而受到批评。免费使用公共汽车和有轨电车断绝了车票收入,同时增加了安全维护和响应更多乘客需求所需的成本。正如蒙彼利埃(法国)的一位交通官员所解释的那样,将票价归零是一项“剥夺对公共交通的发展至关重要的资源”的政策。此外,根据许多交通工程师和经济学家的说法,公共交通应该作为自给自足的或受市场机制约束的盈利机构。

FFPT is therefore a “fake good idea” based on the illusion that “there are goods or services that have no cost.” In other words, reducing the price to zero allegedly devalues the service to both its operators and passengers-clients. Finally, FFPT is often portrayed as an irrational idea. Supposedly, fares are not only a source of economic revenue, but also as a mechanism that controls passenger behavior. Without tickets, passengers would make trips that engineers deem marginal, “non-productive” or even “useless.” Put simply, the existence of tickets is what keeps passengers from going insane.

因此,FFPT是一种“假的好主意”,基于“商品或服务没有成本”的错觉。换句话说,将价格降低到零可能会使服务贬值给运营商和乘客客户。 最后,FFPT经常被描述为一种非理性的思想。 应该说,票价不仅是经济收入的来源,也是控制乘客行为的机制。 如果没有门票,乘客就会进行工程师们认为边缘化的,“非生产性的”甚至“无用”的旅行。简而言之,门票的存在让乘客远离疯狂。

However, some analysts point out that abolishing fares can help decrease equipment and personnel costs. Getting rid of the various devices and machines used to sell, validate, and control tickets saves money. No money has to be spent on secure cash management systems that include counting rooms, cameras, cash pickup, and deposit services. No commission is paid for third-party ticket sales, paper or electronic tickets, and accounting services.

然而,一些分析人士指出,取消车票有助于降低设备和人员成本。 摆脱用于销售,验证和控制门票的各种设备和机器可以节省资金。 不再有资金被迫用于安全现金管理系统,这包括结算室,照相机,现金提取和存入服务。不会再有佣金支付给第三方门票销售,纸质或电子机票以及会计服务。

At the same time, the lost revenue from ticket sales usually constitutes only a part of total public transport budget. This means the actual costs of maintenance and investment in a public transport system are never fully covered by its passengers — the public subsidy plays a much more important role in this regard.

与此同时,门票销售收入上的损失通常只占公共交通总预算的一部分。这意味着公共交通系统的维护和投资的实际成本从未被乘客完全覆盖过 —公共补贴在这方面发挥着更重要的作用。

These arguments are supported by the evidence from Tallinn and Aubagne. Before Tallinn switched to a fare-free system, only one-third of the operational budget of its public transport network was covered by revenue from fares, while the remaining two-thirds were provided by a direct municipal subsidy. Crucially, free fares are offered only to registered residents of the city.

这些论点得到了塔林和欧巴涅的证据的支持。 在塔林转向无车票系统之前,其公共交通网络的运营预算中只有三分之一由车票收入支付,而其余三分之二则由直接市政补贴提供。 关键是,只向该市的注册居民提供免车票。

As a result, between May 2012 (seven months before the implementation of FFPT) and May 2016 the number of Tallinn residents increased from 415,000 to 440,000, visibly attracted by access to free rides. Since Estonian municipalities have the right to collect part of their residents’ personal income tax, and the average tax contribution per resident amounts to €1000 per year, gaining twenty-five thousand new residents meant generating €25 million of additional revenue per year. This largely covered the money lost from fares (€12.2 million). As a result, instead of losing money, Tallinn gained €12.8 million per year.

因此,在2012年5月(FFPT实施前7个月)和2016年5月之间,塔林居民的数量从415,000增加到440,000,明显受到免费乘车的吸引。 由于爱沙尼亚市政当局有权收取部分居民的个人所得税,而且每位居民的平均税收贡献为每年1000欧元,因此新增2.5万居民意味着每年可获得2500万欧元的额外收入。 这主要涵盖了票价损失的金额(1220万欧元)。 因此,塔林不是亏钱,而是每年赚取了1280万欧元。

In Aubagne, revenue from fares was even less (8.6 percent of the operational budget) and fare-dodging was common. A switch to FFPT in part enabled local authorities to increase the versement transport — a tax that French municipalities can collect from local companies with more than eleven employees. Following French law, the tax could be increased from 1.05 percent to 1.8 percent once Aubagne committed to building a right-of-way tram line — a project that should be seen as integral to the shift to a fare-free network, which, besides zeroing fares, meant a thorough redesign and improvement of public transport services. The increase in the versement transport raised revenue by €5.7 million, which together with operational savings (€160,000) largely covered the cost of fare abolition (€1.57 million).

在欧巴涅,票价收入甚至更低(占运营预算的8.6%),并且逃票很常见。 转向FFPT的部分原因是地方当局的交通经费增加—法国市政当局可以向拥有超过11名员工的当地公司收取税款。根据法国法律,一旦欧巴涅致力于建设有权经营电车线路,税收可以从1.05%增加到1.8%—这个项目应被视为向无车票网络转变的不可或缺的一部分。票价归零意味着彻底重新设计和改善公共交通服务。 经济运输的增加使收入增加了570万欧元,再加上运营节省(160,000欧元),大大覆盖了取消车票增加的成本(157万欧元)。

Unsustainable?

不可持续?

Another set of arguments regarding FFPT revolves around the question of its capacity to contribute to “sustainable” mobility. In this perspective, transport is seen as key component of the “good city,” which is not only economically strong, but also socially cohesive and diverse, environmentally friendly, healthy, and participatory. To increase “quality of life” and “livability,” the proponents of sustainable mobility focus on the challenge of facilitating a shift from cars to public transport and “soft” modes such as cycling and walking.

关于FFPT的另一组争论围绕其促进“可持续”运行的能力问题展开。从这个角度来看,交通被视为“好城市”的重要组成部分,这不仅带来经济繁荣,而且带来社会凝聚力,多样性,环境友好,健康和参与度。为了提高“生活质量”和“宜居度”,可持续交通的支持者专注于促进从汽车转向公共交通和“软”模式(例如如骑自行车和步行)带来的挑战。

From this perspective, sustainable transport researchers claim that disincentivizing the use of cars — through parking policy, congestion charging, or increasing fuel taxes — is more effective in terms of regulating car mobility than abolishing fares in public transport. Moreover, it’s assumed that new passengers attracted by FFPT are pedestrians and cyclists, rather than car drivers. Consequently, for many public transport operators, reducing the price of tickets to zero works against efforts to increase the quality of their service.

从这个角度来看,可持续交通研究人员声称抑制汽车的使用——通过停车政策,拥堵收费或增加燃油税——在管制汽车的灵活性方面比在公共交通中取消车票更有效。 此外,假设FFPT吸引的新乘客是行人和骑车者,而不是汽车司机。 因此,对于许多公共交通运营商而言,将车票价格降至零会影响提高服务质量的努力。

None of these claims seem valid when looking at the data from actual cases of FFPT. First of all, each and every fare abolition program appears to generate a significant increase in the number of passengers. In Tallinn, within three years of fare abolition the number of passengers increased by 14 percent. In the same span of time in Aubagne, whose public transport network had clearly been underused, the number of passengers went up by a stunning 235.8 percent. Can such an increase in passengers — whether they previously used cars, bicycles, or walked — be considered a negative phenomenon?

在查看来自FFPT实际案例的数据时,这些说法似乎都失效了。首先,每个车票取消计划似乎都会使乘客人数大幅增加。 在塔林,在取消票价的三年内,乘客人数增加了14%。 在欧巴涅的同一时间段内,其公共交通网络显然未得到充分利用,乘客人数增加比例惊人的235.8%。 乘客的这种增加—无论是以前使用过汽车,自行车还是走路—都能被视为负面现象吗?

Although it was clearly not the among the main aims of the policy, FFPT nonetheless attracted some car users to public transport. In Tallinn, the share of public transport increased by 9 percent, and that of cars decreased by 3 percent. In Aubagne, although no precise data is available, a smaller shift to public transport has been observed in passenger surveys: 20 percent of new passengers who used to drive claim to have abandoned their cars precisely because of free rides. Finally, while in Tallinn as well as Aubagne the quality of public transport significantly increased before fare abolition, it continued to do so not just despite, but precisely because of FFPT. Providing free rides to passengers generated even stronger political support for developing public transport, which in both cities stands at the center of the political agenda.

尽管这显然不是该政策的主要目标之一,但FFPT仍然吸引了一些汽车用户乘坐公共交通工具。 在塔林,公共交通的比例增加了9%,汽车的比例下降了3%。 在欧巴涅,尽管没有准确的数据,但在乘客调查中观察到较小的公共交通转移:20%的曾经开车的新乘客声称因为免费乘车而放弃了他们的汽车。最后,在塔林以及欧巴涅,公共交通的质量在取消车票之前显着上升,但不仅如此,它仍然继续上升,恰恰是因为FFPT。为乘客提供免费乘车服务,为发展公共交通提供了更强大的政治支持,发展公共交通在这两个城市中都处于政治议程的中心。

Socially Just, Politically Transformative

社会正义,政治转型

The third set of arguments in the debate about FFPT views the policy not in terms of its economic viability or contribution to sustainable development, but its potential to facilitate a profound and long-term social and political transformation. The fundamental value of fare abolition lies in simplifying the way public transport is used: it can be taken by anybody, at any time, according to any needs they may have. Public transport is thus imagined not as a commodity, but as a “common good” — similar to many other public services such as health care, education, parks, roads, sidewalks, cycling paths, streetlights and lampposts, libraries, schools, kindergartens, or playgrounds.

关于FFPT的辩论中的第三组争论认为该政策不在于其经济可行性或对可持续发展的贡献,而在于其促进深刻和长期的社会和政治转型的潜力。废除车票的基本价值观基于简化公共交通的使用方式:任何人都可以随时根据其需求使用任何方式使用公共交通。 因此,公共交通不是一种商品,而是一种“公共利益”—类似于许多其他公共服务,如医疗保障,教育,公园,道路,人行道,自行车道,路灯和路灯柱,图书馆,学校,幼儿园, 或游乐场。

Just as in the case of these services, we could imagine public transport being continuously provided free of charge, regardless of whether it’s needed in a given moment or not. After all, you don’t have to insert coins to light an individual lamp posts on your way home at night, or pay for every minute spent in a park or library.

正如在这些服务案例中,我们可以想象公共交通是免费提供的,无论是否在特定时刻被需要。 毕竟,你不必在晚上回家的路上插入硬币以点亮一个灯柱,也不必为在公园或图书馆花费的每一分钟付费。

In this sense, FFPT introduces a different logic into transport. It moves away from the market-oriented focus on profitability and demand management. It directly challenges a free-market dogma that “continues to envisage payment as a way of assuring that infrastructure is respected.”

从这个意义上讲,FFPT在交通中引入了不同的逻辑。 它远离市场导向的聚焦于盈利能力和需求管理。它直接挑战了一种自由市场的教条,即“继续设想支付作为确保基础设施受到尊重的一种方式”。

For some municipal officials, it fits the socialist vision of transport as a public, accessible and affordable service. For others, it expresses a more radical, anticapitalist principle of de-commodifying common goods and services, and signals a transition from “customer-passengers” to “citizens.” Abolishing fares may be seen as way of challenging bio-political control over passengers exercised through ticketing and surveillance, which is often accompanied by policing strategies that focus especially on undocumented users.

对于一些市政官员来说,它符合社会主义的交通愿景,即公共,便利和负担得起的服务。 对于其他人来说,它表达了一种更为激进的反资本主义原则,即将公共利益和服务去商品化,并标志着从“顾客—乘客”到“公民”的过渡。取消车票可能被视为挑战通过票务和监视对乘客进行生物-政治控制的方式,这通常伴随着集中关注无证用户的警务策略。

Finally, providing unconditional access to public transport has been praised for directly addressing the issue of social exclusion, inequality, and transport poverty. Increasing accessibility for lower-income passengers means creating a more socially just transport system. A fare-free network “shows solidarity with the weak, with those who cannot afford a car, with those who are dependent on public transport, who are particularly affected by its drawbacks.”

最后,因为直接解决了社会排斥,不平等和交通贫困问题,提供无条件的公共交通服务受到了赞扬。增加低收入乘客的可达性意味着建立一个更加社会公正的交通系统。一个免车票的网络“显示了与弱者的团结,与那些买不起汽车的人,以及那些依赖公共交通的人,特别是受到其缺陷的影响的人。”

That outcome is clearly visible in Tallinn. Providing unconditional access to public transport resulted in increased use among the unemployed (32 percent) and low-income groups (26 percent among residents with income less than 300 euros per month). Buses and trams are used more heavily by residents on parental or home leaves (21 percent), and pensioners (17 percent). This phenomenon is visible across age groups, and particularly among the youth (21 percent among fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds), the middle-aged (16 percent among forty- to forty-nine-year-olds) and the elderly (19 percent among residents between sixty- and seventy-four-year-olds).

这一结果在塔林清晰可见。 无条件使用公共交通工具导致失业者(32%)和低收入群体(每月收入低于300欧元的居民中26%)的使用率增加。 父母或离开家庭的人(21%)和养老金领取者(17%)这类居民更多地使用公共汽车和有轨电车。 这种现象在不同年龄组中都可以见到,尤其是年轻人(15至19岁人群中占21%),中年人(四十至四十九岁人口中占16%)和老年人( 在六十到七十四岁的居民中占19%)。

The use of public transport has increased in post-Soviet housing estates where a large share of Russian-speaking Tallinners live, facilitating integration for that ethnic group. At the same, use has also been on the rise in middle-class neighborhoods, showing that free rides are not just attractive for the poor.

后苏联住宅区使用公共交通工具的比例有所增加,其中大部分讲俄语的塔林人住在这里,促进了该族群的融合。 同时,中产阶级社区的使用率也在增加,这表明免费乘车不仅只对穷人有吸引力。

It is clear, however, that FFPT “would not solve all of our problems; rather, at best it would represent the first step” towards a wider transformation of the power relations that shape transport. Against mobility experts who claim that passengers are more concerned with issues of safety, frequency, reliability, and availability of transport, a variety of organizations and movements have campaigned for fare abolition.

然而,很明显,FFPT“无法解决所有我们的问题; 相反,它充其量只是代表“朝着更广泛的关于塑造交通的权力关系的转变迈出的“第一步”。 与那些声称乘客更关心安全,班次频繁度,可靠性和交通可用性问题的交通专家相反,各种组织和运动都在争取取消车票。

One of their many examples is the Movimento Passe Livre (“free fare movement”) that emerged in Brazil during protests against an increase of public transport fares across the country in June 2013. The question of increased ticket prices was important not only as a sign of stark inequality between highly mobile car-driving urbanites and the urban poor who have no choice but to use public transport. FFPT also constituted a rallying cry against the continuing commodification of public services and their imposition of purely economic, “rational,” and “sustainable” considerations.

其中一个例子是Movimento Passe Livre(“免车票运动”),它在2013年6月在巴西的关于反对全国公共交通票价上涨的抗议活动中出现。票价上涨的问题不仅仅是一个关于高度运动的驾驶汽车的城市居民与别无选择只能使用公共交通工具的城市贫民之间的严重不平等的标志。 FFPT也构成了对公共服务持续商品化及其实施纯粹经济,“理性”和“可持续”考虑的反抗的号召。

What About the Workers?

工人会怎样呢?

In addition to this debate, the issue of FFPT reflects on the position of transport workers. How does a switch to a fare-free system affect them? In many cities, including Tallinn and Aubagne, FFPT has been applauded by drivers for improving their labor conditions. Even if working hours and salaries remained the same, drivers no longer have to sell and monitor tickets, which used to be a source of considerable stress.

在这场辩论之外,FFPT问题还反映了交通工人的地位。 切换到免车票系统如何影响他们? 在许多城市,包括塔林和欧巴涅,FFPT一直受到司机的欢迎,以改善他们的劳动条件。 即使工作时间和工资保持不变,司机也不再需要出售和监控车票,这往往是相当大的压力来源。

The shift to FFPT also means that drivers no longer have to count cash at the end of their working day. In Aubagne, one driver told me that FFPT “is heavenly. It means no more stress . . . about fare-dodging, checking tickets . . . With [FFPT] the driver can focus on driving and welcoming passengers, that’s it.” The policy “transformed the the job of the bus driver, who now has only one question in mind: driving the bus well.”

转向FFPT还意味着司机不再需要在工作日结束时计算现金。 在欧巴涅,一位司机告诉我,FFPT“是天堂般的。 这意味着不再有压力….关于逃票,检票…. 通过[FFPT],驾驶员可以专注于驾驶和欢迎乘客,就是这样。“这一政策”改变了公交车司机的工作,他或她现在只考虑一个问题:好好的驾驶公交车。“

The shift has not been entirely positive for all workers. In Tallinn, as many as seventy out of eighty ticket controllers were made redundant. In Aubagne, ticket inspectors were made responsible for maintaining security aboard buses, since initially there were widespread concerns that fare abolition would result in vandalism. Once security issues were quickly understood to be minor, inspectors were further directed to supervise the drivers’ attitude and performance — instead of monitoring passengers, they now monitor other workers.

这种转变并不是对所有工人来说都是完全正面的。 在塔林,80个票务管理员中有70个被裁员。在欧巴涅,检票员负责维护公共汽车上的安全,因为最初人们普遍担心废除车票会导致故意破坏。一旦安全问题很快被认为是次要的,检查员就会被指示监督司机的态度和表现 – 而不是监控乘客,他们现在监视其他工人。

The decreased scope of duties under FFPT leaves the position of drivers within their respective transport agencies the same, if not weaker. In Tallinn, although drivers can join a company-based trade union, their actual capacity to engage in collective bargaining continues to be severely limited by a system in which individual salary bonuses aren’t awarded to employees who raise objections to company policy. As one driver told me, “with or without fares, there is fixed bonus every month: if you drive on time, the bonus comes, but if you make a [complaint] then the bonus can be reduced.”

在FFPT下减少的职责范围使得各交通机构内的司机的地位和以前相同,如果不是更弱势。 在塔林,尽管司机可以加入基于公司的工会,但他们参与集体谈判的实际能力仍然受到一种制度的严重限制,在这种制度中,个人工资奖金不会颁发给反对公司政策的员工。 正如一位司机告诉我的那样,“有或没有车票,每个月都有固定的奖金:如果你准时开车,奖金就会到来,但如果你做了[抱怨],那么奖金就会减少。”

In Aubagne, FFPT was introduced in the context of a shift from a family-like business to a privatized network run by a local branch of Veolia, a French transnational company. For one local trade unionist, there is “a major contradiction between abolishing fares and letting a private company . . . manage it.” Although Veolia adhered and adjusted to FFPT, it simultaneously implemented a series of measures “rationalizing” the PT network. For instance, drivers’ individual punctuality began to be measured by a GPS system, and their responsibility for managing the company gradually diminished. The introduction of FFPT complicated their situation rather than empowered them in their struggle to join trade unions of their choice, and to have a voice in the debate about the company’s policy.

在欧巴涅,FFPT的引入是在从家族式企业转变为由法国跨国公司Veolia的当地分支机构运营的私有化网络的背景下。 对于一个当地的工会成员来说,“废除车票和让私人公司….管理之间存在着重大的矛盾。”尽管Veolia坚持并调整了FFPT,但它同时实施了一系列“合理化”PT网络的措施。 例如,驾驶员的个人准确性开始由GPS系统测量,他们对公司管理的责任逐渐减少。 FFPT的引入使他们的处境变得复杂,而不是在他们在加入自己选择的工会的斗争中增强他们,并在关于公司政策的辩论中发表意见。

Transport Is Not (Only) About Transport

交通并不仅仅与交通有关

The controversy created by the question of fare abolition reveals a wider problem regarding how urban transport is conceived and analyzed. The debate about transport seems to be dominated by technical and economic narratives, while the explicitly social and political dimensions of mobility are often sidelined. In the particular case of FFPT, approaching the policy as a transport mechanism generates a series of myths and misunderstandings that are not substantiated by the evidence from actually existing cases of FFPT programs. Although fare abolition is assumed to break the bank, in reality it may help generate new revenue, by attracting new tax paying residents (Tallinn), or raising local taxes (Aubagne). While it’s attacked as a measure that fails to make cities more sustainable and livable, there is evidence that free rides are to some extent attractive to car drivers, and thus help increase the use of public transport, which in turn means less air pollution and noise. The quality of free transport services is not necessarily worse than paid transport — FFPT can act as a powerful symbolic statement of political support for collective transport.

废除车票问题造成的争议揭示了关于如何构思和分析城市交通的更广泛的问题。关于交通的辩论似乎主要被技术和经济叙述所主宰,而明确的社会和政治层面的流动性往往被排除。在FFPT的特殊案例下,将政策作为一种交通机制处理会产生一系列迷思和误解,这些并未得到实际存在的FFPT计划案例证据的证实。虽然假设取消车票会打破银行,但实际上它可能有助于通过吸引新的纳税居民(塔林)或提高地方税(欧巴涅)来创造新的收入。虽然它被视为一项未能使城市更具可持续性和宜居性的措施,但有证据表明,免费乘车在某种程度上对汽车驾驶员具有吸引力,从而有助于增加公共交通的使用,因此减少了空气污染和噪音。免费交通服务的质量不一定比付费交通更糟糕——FFPT可以作为一个对集体交通进行政治支持的有力的符号化表述。

In other words, transport policies are not (only) about transport. It is when looking at FFPT as an urban policy rather than a transport policy that we can begin to fully understand its ambition and impact. This requires seeing it not in a vacuum of mathematical modeling or analysis of traffic flows, but in the context of the specific place in which it is designed and put into practice — undergirded by power relations and political struggles, interacting with its spatial and social context, affecting the labor conditions of its workers. This means that, while the policy of abolishing public transport fares is obviously related to the field of transport, it cannot be understood as a transport policy alone.

换句话说,交通政策不仅(仅)关于交通。 在将FFPT视为城市政策而非交通政策时,我们可以开始充分了解其雄心和影响。这需要看到它不在数学建模或交通流分析的真空中,而在其设计和实施的特定地方的背景下——由权力关系和政治斗争所支配,与其空间和社会背景相互作用 ,影响其工人的劳动条件。 这意味着,虽然取消公共交通车票的政策显然与交通领域有关,但不能仅仅将其理解为交通政策。

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/public-transportation-brussels-free-tickets

Why the Democratic Socialists of America Won’t Stop Growing——The inside story of DSA’s dramatic ascent.(为什么美国民主社会主义者没有停止增长——DSA的戏剧性的成长的内部故事)

写在前面:DSA在内部活动中展示出了一个社会主义社会到底是怎样的:民主,平等,思想自由,团结合作,拒绝歧视偏见压迫,尊重其他人的人权,不让任何一个人掉队。

Visiting Julia Salazar’s north Brooklyn campaign office one warm July weekend, I’m greeted by a volunteer with a spreadsheet. Like nearly everyone else in the converted coffee shop, she’s a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and she asks me cheerily if I’m there to canvass. I’m not, but if I were, I would be instructed to make my way to a training session on the sunbathed patio out back that is scattered with half-full bottles of sunscreen. After that—in the span of just a half-hour—I would know everything I need to know about how to help elect a card-carrying socialist to the New York state Senate.

我在一个温暖的七月的周末拜访Julia Salazar在北布鲁克林的竞选办公室时,受到一名拿着电子表格的志愿者的欢迎。 和被改造的咖啡店里的几乎其他所有人一样,她是美国民主社会主义者(DSA)的成员,她高兴地问我是不是来参与讨论的。 我不是,但如果我是的话,我会被介绍前往晒日光浴的露台上进行训练,那里散落着半满的防晒霜。在那之后—在半小时的时间内—我将知道如何帮助选举一位成为政党一员的社会主义者到纽约州参议院。


Buy Issue Subscribe

If Salazar makes it to Albany, she will join the ranks of 42 DSA-endorsed candidates who are now or will soon be serving in offices from the Moorhead, Minn., school board to Capitol Hill (that is, if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins the general election as handily as she did her primary in New York’s 14th Congressional District). So far this year, local chapters have endorsed at least 110 candidates.

如果Salazar进入奥尔巴尼,她将加入42名DSA推荐的候选人中,他们现在或即将在明尼苏达州的Moorhead,在从学校董事会到国会山的办公室工作(即,如果Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez在大选中像在在纽约第14届国会区初选中获胜)。今年到目前为止,当地分会已经推荐了至少110名候选人。

DSA may soon have 50,000 members across 200 local groups in all 50 states—up from 6,000 members in 2015. The surge in freshly minted socialists came in three waves: First, those energized by Bernie Sanders’ primary run; second, those brought in by Donald Trump’s election and the Women’s March; and third, those inspired by 27-year-old DSA member Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory in May over incumbent—and Democratic heavyweight—Joe Crowley.

DSA可能很快将在所有50个州的200个当地团体中拥有50,000名成员—2015年有6,000名成员。新生社会主义者的激增来自三个浪潮:第一,伯尼桑德斯的主要活动的激励; 第二,由唐纳德特朗普当选和女性游行带来的; 第三,受到27岁的DSA成员Ocasio-Cortez在5月份对现任—和民主党重量级选手—Joe Crowley的初步胜利的鼓舞。

So what is DSA, exactly, and what is it doing with this growing army?

所以,到底DSA是什么,以及DSA到底和其正在增长的队伍一起做什么?

DSA’s electoral work has attracted national media attention in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez’s historic win. Yet it’s just one part of a bottom-up approach to politics that sees the ballot box and state power as tools for advancing toward a more radically democratic society. Members—most of them millennials, in small towns and big cities in every corner of the country—are engaged in everything from occupying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices to evangelizing about Medicare for All. Many reporters have tried to divine what DSA believes, be that the group’s policy prescriptions or its ideology. DSA, though—to crib from Karl Marx—isn’t looking merely to interpret the world, but to change it, campaign by campaign, door by door. What’s made DSA’s ascendance remarkable is less its analysis of capitalism than its ability to put people angry about capitalism to work.

在Ocasio-Cortez的历史性胜利之后,DSA的选举工作吸引了国家级媒体的关注。然而,这只是自下而上的政治方法的一部分,它将投票箱和政府权力视为推进更加民主的社会的工具。 成员们—其中大多数是千禧一代,在国家各个角落的小镇和的大城市—从事占领移民和海关执法(ICE)办事处到宣传全民医疗保障。许多记者试图猜测DSA所相信的,即该团体的政策处方或其意识形态。 DSA,虽然—引用自卡尔·马克思—不仅仅是为了解释世界,而是为了改变它,一个又一个竞选活动,一扇又一扇门。 DSA崛起的显著之处不在于它对资本主义的分析,而在于让人们对资本主义感到愤怒的能力。

It’s telling that, unlike most socialist groups, DSA was formed out of a merger—not a sectarian split. In 1982, at the dawn of the Reagan era, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New America Movement (NAM) combined forces. DSOC had been founded in 1973 by socialist intellectual Michael Harrington and other members of the Socialist Party who had grown disenchanted with political irrelevance. NAM, founded in 1972 by former members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was rooted in ’60s counterculture, the New Left and second-wave feminism. (In 1976, members of DSOC and NAM moved to Chicago to found In These Times, and for the next decade the then-newspaper reported diligently on the ins and outs of DSOC, NAM and DSA.)

它告诉我们,与大多数社会主义组织不同,DSA是由合并形成的——而不是派别分裂。1982年,在里根时代初期,民主社会主义组织委员会(DSOC)和新美国运动(NAM)联合起来。 DSOC成立于1973年,由社会主义知识分子Michael Harrington和其他对政治无关感到不满的社会党成员组成。 NAM由民主社会学生(SDS)的前成员于1972年创立,植根于60年代的反文化,新左派和第二波女权主义。(1976年,DSOC和NAM的成员移居芝加哥,创建了“在此时”,并且在接下来的十年中,对DSOC,NAM和DSA的来龙去脉孜孜不倦地报道。)

The 1980s would prove a tough decade for left politics, the 1990s and 2000s even more so. DSA shed members and closed chapters around the country as a few loyalists and a steady trickle of young recruits kept the organization running.

对于左翼政治来说,1980s将是艰难的十年,而1990s和2000s更是如此。 DSA在全国范围内分散成员和关闭分部,作为由少数忠诚者和年轻新人的稳定涓涓细流的架构使该组织继续运作。

Enter Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign and his stalwart identification as a “democratic socialist,” a surprise boon for an organization with those two words in its name. DSA’s commitment to being a pluralistic, “multi-tendency” organization also meant it was open enough to accommodate thousands of newcomers.

进入伯尼桑德斯的主要运动和他作为“民主社会主义者”的坚定认同,对于一个以这两个词为名的组织来说,这是一个惊喜。DSA致力于成为一个多元化的,“多趋势”的组织,这也意味着它足以容纳成千上万的新来者。

Democratic socialism itself has always been a heterodox term, encompassing everyone from ideological Trotskyists to New Deal Democrats. The surge of new, mostly 20-something members include anarchists, Marxist academics and—most numerously—political neophytes excited about Sanders’ message and frustrated with the Democratic establishment.

民主社会主义本身一直是一个非正统的术语,涵盖了从思想上的托洛茨基主义者到新政民主党人的每一个人。新的,大多数为20多岁的成员的激增包括无政府主义者,马克思主义学者和——最多的——政治新手,他们对桑德斯的信息感到兴奋,并对民主的建设感到沮丧。

DSA isn’t keen to enforce a strict definition of “democratic socialism”—although mainstream media outlets newly hip to DSA are desperately looking for one. On its website, DSA writes:

DSA并不热衷于强加一个对“民主社会主义”的严格定义—尽管主流媒体机构对DSA非常敏感,正在拼命寻找这样一个定义。 DSA在其网站上写道:

At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people. …

我们的社会主义的根源是对民主的深切承诺,作为手段和目的。由于我们不太可能在明天立即终结资本主义,DSA今天为改革而斗争,这将削弱企业的力量并增加劳动人民的力量。…

Our vision is of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices and relationships that affect the entirety of our lives. We call this vision democratic socialism—a vision of a more free, democratic and humane society.

我们的愿景是一个社会,在这个社会中,人民在影响我们整个生活的选择和关系中拥有真正的声音。 我们将这一愿景称为民主社会主义—一个更自由,更民主和更人道的社会的愿景。

Members I spoke with took this to mean everything from taking public goods like healthcare off the private market (along the lines of Scandinavian social democracies) to worker-ownership of the means of production. Central Iowa DSA co-chair Caroline Schoonover was among many to say that democratic socialism means “taking power from the few and giving it to the many.” All saw small-d democracy—people having a say in the decisions that affect them—as central, both in politics and workplaces, and in DSA itself.

我采访过的成员认为,这意味着从私人市场将医疗保健等公共产品转移到(沿着斯堪的纳维亚社会民主国家的方向)工人对生产资料的所有上。 爱荷华州中部DSA联合主席Caroline Schoonover和很多人一样说民主社会主义意味着“从少数人手中夺取权力并将其交给多数人”。所有人都看到小民主—人民对影响他们的决策有发言权—无论是在政治和工作场所,还是在DSA本身,都很关键。


The Socialist Feminists of Democratic Socialists of America organize a protest outside of the New York County Republican Office in New York City on July 5, 2017. (Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

美国民主社会主义的社会女权主义者于2017年7月5日在纽约市纽约共和党办公室外组织抗议。(拍摄者:Erik McGregor / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images)

For this story, I spoke with around two dozen DSA members from chapters around the country. The primary source of their excitement was that DSA chapters seemed to be actively working on something, not just sitting around reading Marx. Like the citizen action group Indivisible, which also exploded after the election, DSA let people shake off a feeling of helplessness about the political climate and roll up their sleeves.

在这个故事中,我与来自全国各地的大约二十几个DSA成员进行了交谈。 他们兴奋的主要原因是DSA的分部似乎正积极致力于某些事情,而不仅仅是坐在那里围着阅读马克思。就像选举后爆发的公民行动组织Indivisible一样,DSA让人们摆脱对政治气候的无助的感觉,然后卷起袖子。

DSA also offers a community. Chapters host regular beach days, parties, fundraisers and social events, like Metro D.C. DSA’s recent “No ICE Cream Social.” If Indivisible was able to connect many alienated, middle-class suburbanites jarred out of their political comfort zone, DSA has provided a home for tens of thousands of downwardly-mobile, debt-ridden millennials grappling with a system that simply isn’t working for them.

DSA还提供了社区。 分部定期举办海滩日,派对,筹款活动和社交活动,如Metro DC DSA最近的“No ICE Cream Social”。如果Indivisible能够将许多相互疏远的,中产阶级的郊区居民与联系起来拉出他们的政治舒适区,DSA为成千上万的向下移动,债务缠身的千禧一代提供了一个家,他们正在和一个根本不适合他们的系统扭打。

Adam Shuck and Arielle Cohen, 32 and 29, joined Pittsburgh DSA in its infancy; Shuck was among the seven people who first met at a bar in 2016 to talk about getting the chapter together. Each was energized by Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign but disillusioned by his presidency. “I thought we were going to see some kind of New Deal,” Shuck says. The frustration led him at first to join the International Socialist Organization before the Sanders campaign brought him to DSA. While a student at SUNY Purchase, Cohen grew disillusioned with the sausage-making and compromise that created the Affordable Care Act, and organized with Occupy Wall Street before moving to Pittsburgh and finding her way to DSA. Now, Shuck and Cohen co-chair the Pittsburgh chapter.

Adam Shuck和Arielle Cohen,32岁和29岁,在其初期就加入了匹兹堡DSA; Shuck是2016年第一次在酒吧和我见面的七个人之一,他们谈论将这一分布组合在一起。巴拉克•奥巴马的2008年总统竞选活动激励了他们,但他的总统任期令人失望。 “我以为我们会看到某种新政,”Shuck说。在桑德斯的竞选活动将他带到DSA之前,这种沮丧使他首先加入了ISO。在纽约州立大学当学生期间,Cohen对“平价医疗法案”的和稀泥和妥协感到失望,并在前往匹兹堡之前与占领华尔街合作并找到了通往DSA的道路。现在,Shuck和Cohen共同担任匹兹堡分部的主席。

Pittsburgh DSA held its first general meeting in December 2016 with around 100 people. Now it has a dizzying number of working groups: a health justice committee campaigning for Medicare for All; reading groups tackling Marx and Engels; an anti-imperialism committee lobbying for legislation criticizing Israel’s occupation of Palestine; a socialist feminist working group exposing crisis pregnancy centers; an ecosocialist group fighting the privatization of the city’s water and sewer system; a housing rights group pushing for protections for renters; and a number of inward-facing groups handling tasks like recruitment and communications.

匹兹堡DSA于2016年12月召开了第一次大会,约有100人参加。 现在,它拥有令人眼花缭乱的工作组:健康正义委员会,为全民医疗保障开展活动; 阅读小组拥抱马克思和恩格斯; 一个反帝国主义委员会为了通过批评以色列占领巴勒斯坦的立法而游说; 暴露危机怀孕中心的社会女权主义工作组; 一个与城市供水和下水道系统的私有化作斗争的生态社会主义小组; 一个住房权利组织,推动对租房者的保护; 以及一些面向内部事务的小组处理征募和沟通等任务。

The chapter also brought the newly revived DSA one of its early electoral victories, rattling the local Democratic machine. In December 2017, the group threw its weight behind Summer Lee’s campaign to represent House District 34. In the May primary, with the help of DSA and groups like Our Revolution and the Sierra Club, Lee, 30, a recent law school grad, beat Paul Costa, 57, a 19-year incumbent and member of a dynastic Pittsburgh Democratic family.

这一分部还为新生的DSA带来了早期选举胜利之一,震撼了当地的民主党机器。 2017年12月,该组织支持的Summer Lee的竞选活动代表众议院34区。在5月的初选中,在DSA和我们的革命和塞拉俱乐部等团体的帮助下,Lee,30岁,最近从法学院毕业,击败现年57岁的Paul Costa,他当了19年的主席,也是一位匹兹堡民主党家庭王朝的成员。

Lee had experience working on school board races and on a coordinated campaign to elect Katie McGinty governor and Hillary Clinton president in the 2016 general election, and she was impressed with DSA’s electoral work on Mik Pappas’ judicial campaign. Pappas ran on a platform of ending cash bail and working to end mass incarceration, and won in a landslide, with the help of a dedicated grassroots turnout effort staffed in part by DSA members.

Lee在2016年大选中有过参加学校董事会比赛和协调Katie McGinty的州长竞选活动和希拉里克林顿的总统竞选的经验,她对DSA在Mik Pappas的司法竞选活动中的选举工作印象很深刻。Pappas在一个结束现金保释并努力结束大规模监禁的平台上运行,并且在一次由部分DSA成员专职负责的基层投票工作的帮助下以压倒性优势获胜。

“They were running 20 or more canvassing shifts a week,” says Lee. “I had never seen that type of energy around magistrate elections. I realized that ideologically we aligned.” She joined DSA shortly thereafter and sought them out as her first endorsement.

“他们每周进行20次或更多次的拉票,”Lee说。 “我从未在县长选举中看到过那种能量。 我意识到在意识形态上我们是一致的。“她很快就加入了DSA并将其作为她的第一推荐目标。

It wasn’t easy. DSA’s candidate endorsement process is a microcosm of its baked-in commitment to direct democracy. For every decision, at every level, there’s deliberate space for members to duke things out, combined with a commitment to ultimately supporting the group decision rather than splitting off into rival factions. The very question of whether to engage in the electoral process—and in particular, to work within the Democratic Party—remains fraught, with many members skeptical of investing limited organizational resources into elections rather than base-building.

这并不容易。 DSA的候选人推荐程序是其直接民主的承诺的缩影。对于每一个决策,在每个层面上,都有一个有意识的空间让成员们相互辩论,同时承诺最终支持团队决策,而不是分裂为敌对派系。是否参与选举进程—特别是在民主党内工作—的问题依然没有确定答案,许多成员对将有限的组织资源投入选举而非基础建设持怀疑态度。


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is joined by New York gubenatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon at her victory party in the Bronx after upsetting incumbent Democratic Representative Joseph Crowly on June 26, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Scott Heins/Getty Images)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez在2018年6月26日在纽约市战胜了现任民主党众议员Joseph Crowly后,在布朗克斯的胜利派对上加入了纽约州的候选人Cynthia Nixon。 (拍摄者:Scott Heins / Getty Images)

New York City DSA hotly debated whether to endorse Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s challenger from the left, Cynthia Nixon, after she declared herself a democratic socialist. Several dozen DSA members signed a “vote no” statement arguing that universal healthcare and rent control will be won not by electing candidates to office but by “building working-class power that holds [them] accountable,” citing the successful teachers’ strikes in Republican states. In late July, NYC-DSA officially endorsed her after an extended series of debates.

在她宣布自己是一名民主社会主义者之后,纽约市DSA热烈讨论是否支持州长Andrew Cuomo的挑战者左派Cynthia Nixon。 数十名DSA成员签署了一份“投票说不”声明,认为全民医疗保障和租金控制不是通过选举候选人到办公室里来赢得,而是通过“建立让他们自己负责的工人阶级权力”,并引用在共和党州发生的成功的教师罢工。 在7月下旬,经过一系列辩论,NYC-DSA正式决定支持她。

“We have folks who distrust electoral work, and even among those that don’t, there are different ways of thinking of how to approach it,” says DSA National Director Maria Svart, 38, a former SEIU organizer. “Everybody appreciates that electoral success only comes when you have an organized base. Having all these tendencies in conversation means that everybody learns from each other.”

“我们有些不信任选举工作的成员,即使是那些不信任选举工作的人,也有不同的思考如何接近它的方式,”DSA全国总监Maria Svart说,她38岁,是前SEIU组织者。“每个人都认可选举的成功只有在你有一个有组织的基础时才会出现。在谈话中拥有所有这些倾向意味着每个人都在互相学习。“

While the endorsement process varies from chapter to chapter, in some cases—including Lee’s—the first step is filling out a lengthy form with questions from each of the chapter’s working groups. Typically, one is whether the candidate identifies as a socialist. Members weigh that alongside specific policy questions (“Do you support universal rent control? Abolishing the police?”) and a range of other concerns: How much of an impact could the chapter have on the race? How will it build the chapter’s capacity and the movement to challenge the capitalist class?

虽然推荐进程因分部不同而有所不同,但在某些情况下—包括Lee在内—第一步是填写一个冗长的表格,其中包含来自每个分部的工作组的问题。通常,一个是候选人是否是社会主义者。 成员们会根据具体的政策问题(“你支持普遍租金管制吗?废除警察吗?”)以及其他一系列问题来衡量:分部在种族问题上有多大影响? 分部如何拥有能力和发动挑战资产阶级的运动?

Next comes the interview process. After filling out Pittsburgh DSA’s questionnaire, Lee was interviewed by a roomful of members. The group voted to endorse both Lee and Sara Innamorato, a state representative candidate, and the two supported one another’s campaigns.

接下来是面试过程。在填写匹兹堡DSA的调查问卷后,Lee接受了一些成员的面试。该小组投票支持Lee和Sara Innamorato,一位州代表候选人,还有两人支持另一个人的竞选活动。

Ocasio-Cortez, in New York, jumped through even more hoops. Because her congressional district spans the Bronx and Queens DSA chapters, she had five interviews: with the electoral committees and membership of each branch, and then the citywide convention. “We put her through hell,” jokes Michael Kinnucan, a DSA member now co-managing the state Senate campaign of Julia Salazar (whom the organization endorsed alongside Ocasio-Cortez in a parallel process).

纽约的Ocasio-Cortez跳过了更多的环节。因为她的国会区域跨越布朗克斯和皇后区的DSA分部,所以她进行了五次面试:先是选举委员会和每个分会的成员,然后是全市范围的会议。 “我们让她通过地狱,”现任DSA成员Michael Kinnucan开玩笑说,他现在共同管理Julia Salazar的州参议院竞选活动(该组织同时支持Ocasio-Cortez)。

Abdullah Younus, co-chair of NYC-DSA and a member of DSA’s National Electoral Committee, explains that the extensive endorsement process isn’t just a means of vetting candidates, but of building members’ commitment to them. “It makes it a lot easier to have the same folks who write the questions come out and knock for those candidates,” he says. “They’re talking about work they’re invested in.”

NYC-DSA联合主席,DSA全国选举委员会成员Abdullah Younus解释说,大规模的推荐程序不仅是审查候选人的手段,而且是建立成员对他们的承诺。“这让那些写出问题的人出来并为那些候选人敲门更容易,”他说。 “他们谈论的是他们所投资的工作。”

Salazar, 27, estimates that some 800 DSA members live in and around her district, which has translated into hundreds of volunteers spreading the word about her September primary. Even in her short time with the group (she joined in late 2016), she’s seen a change in how fellow leftists relate to electoral politics. “I think part of it is people seeing the term ‘democratic socialist’ normalized in the electoral realm, through Bernie mostly, at least initially, and so seeing it as an actually viable strategy,” she told me between knocking doors.

27岁的Salazar估计约有800名DSA成员住在她所在地区及其周围,这已经转化为数百名志愿者,宣传她9月份的初选。即使在她与该小组一起的短暂时间内(她于2016年底加入),她也看到了左翼同伴与选举政治有关的变化。 “我认为部分原因是人们看到”民主社会主义“这一术语在选举领域正常化,至少在初期通过伯尼,因此将其视为一种切实可行的战略,”她在敲门之间告诉我。

Though she’d worked on legislative campaigns as a staff organizer with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Salazar only recently began to consider electoral work. “It’s not something I ever thought about before—not just for myself, but in seeing leadership development in community organizing as a path toward seizing state power,” she says. “That sounds like a jump, right? But ultimately that’s the goal.”

尽管她作为犹太人种族和经济正义的工作组织者参与立法活动,Salazar最近才开始考虑选举工作。“这不是我以前想过的事情—不仅仅是为了我自己,而是将社区组织中的领导力发展视为夺取政权的途径,”她说。 “这听起来像一个跳跃,对吗? 但最终这就是目标。“


New York state senate candidate Julia Salazar (R) knocks doors in Bushwick, N.Y., with a fellow DSA member in July. (Photo by Raul Coto-Batres)

在7月。纽约州参议员候选人Julia Salazar(R)在纽约州布什维克与DSA成员一起敲门。 (拍摄者:Raul Coto-Batres)

Thanks in part to the Sanders campaign and Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset, that goal feels more within reach now than it has since the days of the Socialist Party’s Eugene Debs. Big, universal programs like a federal job guarantee or Medicare for All draw overwhelming popular support. And small, local races offer an opportunity for the grassroots to tip the balance.

感谢部分由于桑德斯竞选活动和Ocasio-Cortez引发的惊人不安,这个目标现在比社会主义党的Eugene Debs时代更容易实现。像联邦工作保障或全民医疗保障这样的大型通用计划吸引了压倒性的大众支持。小规模的本地竞赛为基层提供了进行平衡的机会。

Establishment candidates in Democratic-controlled cities effectively depend on low turnout. Their political consultants tend to rely more on advertising and glossy mailers, and less on actually talking to people—particularly people who don’t usually vote. Mobilizing even a few thousand new voters in that context, then, is a fairly straightforward formula for victory. When DSA member Lee Carter won a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates in November 2017, he beat his Republican opponent by 9 points—a margin of 1,850 votes.

在民主党控制的城市中建立候选人有效的取决于低投票率。他们的政治顾问倾向于更多地依赖广告和有光泽的邮件,而不是真正地与人交谈—特别是那些经常不投票的人。因此,在这种情况下动员甚至几千名新选民,是一个相当直接的获得胜利的方案。当DSA成员Lee Carter 在2017年11月赢得弗吉尼亚众议院席位时,他以9分的优势击败共和党对手—边缘的1,850张选票。

“Our party structure protects incumbency, and relies on an ignorant electorate,” Summer Lee says, noting how much time her campaign spent educating voters about the election itself. “If everybody were voting, we’d have a completely different system.”

“我们的政党结构保护在位者,并依赖于一个无知的选民,”Summer Lee说,并指出她的竞选活动花了多少时间教育选民关于选举本身的内容。 “如果每个人都投票,我们就会有一个完全不同的系统。”

Depending on the city, DSA can offer a large, self-organized volunteer base to candidates who navigate its endorsement process. Pittsburgh DSA estimates that its volunteers knocked on some 70,000 doors through the course of Lee’s campaign. Turnout in Lee’s district was 14 percent higher than in others around Allegheny County and 54 percent higher than in the last midterm election.

根据城市的不同,DSA可以为那些在其推荐过程中进行导航的候选人提供一个庞大的,自组织的志愿者基地。匹兹堡DSA估计其志愿者在Lee的竞选期间敲了大约7万个门。 Lee的区域的投票率比阿勒格尼县周围的投票率高出14%,比上一次中期选举高出54%。

Still, it’d be nearly impossible for DSA-endorsed candidates for higher offices to make do with only DSA’s support, and they often work alongside other organizations like Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and the Working Families Party—especially for bigger races.  Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, for example, convinced Ocasio-Cortez to run and helped staff her campaign, and she gained the backing of Black Lives Matter-Bronx and People for Bernie Sanders, among others. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign reached 120,000 doors overall.

尽管如此,DSA推荐的争取进入更高级的办公室的候选人几乎不可能只接受DSA的支持,他们经常与正义民主党,我们的革命和工作家庭党等其他组织合作—特别是对于更大的竞赛。 例如,正义民主党和全新的国会,说服Ocasio-Cortez参与并帮助她的竞选活动,然后她获得了黑人的命也是命—Bronx和支持伯尼桑德斯的人民等人的支持。 Ocasio-Cortez的活动总共敲了120,000扇门。

By being an organization that does much more than campaign for candidates, DSA hopes to upend the notoriously transactional, short-term nature of electoral work, enabling its members and elected officials to build relationships with and commitments to their communities that extend beyond election day. DSA is still figuring out how to build independent political organizations to hold the politicians it helps elect accountable. Thus far they’ve relied on their close ties with dyed-in-the-wool DSA members-turned-candidates like Lee Carter. DSA, Carter says, has “been the core of my support since I’ve been in the legislature. I still go to meetings whenever I can, and they help me get in contact with other groups.”

作为一个做为远远超过为候选人组织竞选活动的组织,DSA希望颠覆选举工作中的臭名昭着的短期的交易性性质,使其成员和民选官员能够在选举日之外与社区建立关系并做出承诺。 DSA仍在研究如何建立独立的政治组织来控制那些它帮助选举和负责的政客。到目前为止,他们依靠与染色的DSA成员—像Lee Carter这样的候选人的亲密关系。卡特说,DSA“自从我进入立法机构以来一直是我的支持的核心。我仍然可以随时在我可以的时候去参加会议,他们帮助我与其他组织取得联系。“

DSA member, Hawai’i state representative and now U.S. House candidate Kaniela Ing says he hopes that DSA remains “part of an independent Left, and does not get too caught up in electoral and legislative politics”—and that it holds politicians to account, himself included.

DSA成员,夏威夷州代表和现在的美国众议院候选人Kaniela Ing说,他希望DSA仍然是“独立左派的一部分,并且不会过于陷入选举和立法政治中”—并且它让政治家们负责,包括他自己在内。

“I’m a movement candidate,” Ing says. “Hopefully my role is to help push whatever movements are building over the finish line. Elected officials really like to take too much credit for bills they pass that are really the result of the public waking up and forcing politicians to act.” He says he hopes to have regular check-ins with DSA should he make it to Washington.

“我是一名运动候选人,”Ing说。 “希望我的角色是帮助推动能够达到终点线的任何运动。民选官员真的喜欢将他们通过的法案的功劳太多的归功于他们,但这些法案实际上是公众觉醒并迫使政治家们采取行动的结果。“他说他希望能够定期和DSA一起检查,如果他成功去了华盛顿。

Electoral work also feeds into DSA’s other campaigns. Pittsburgh DSA’s membership swelled in the wake of Lee and Innamorato’s wins. “[Email] list building, data tracking, how to talk to people at the doors—that all helps build the muscle that can also help with canvassing for housing justice,” Shuck says.

选举工作也适用于DSA的其他活动。 在Lee和Innamorato的胜利之后,匹兹堡DSA的成员数膨胀了。“[电子邮件]列表建立,数据跟踪,如何与门口的人交谈—所有这些都有助于建立力量,也可以帮助拉票促进住房正义,”Shuck说。

“When we canvass an area, we’re often knocking a door many times, whether for a candidate, for Medicare for All or for housing justice,” Cohen adds. “At this point, people know us when we come to the door, and they know what DSA is.”

“当我们在一个区域拉票时,我们经常多次敲门,无论是为了候选人,还是全民医疗保障或住房正义,”Cohen补充说。 “在这一点上,当我们走到门口时,人民就会认识我们,他们知道什么是DSA。”

NYC-DSA’s Abdullah Younus sees electoral work as a training ground. He says that canvassers for the New York Health Act, legislation to create a statewide single-payer system, “got skilled on this kind of work by going through the electoral working group.”

NYC-DSA的Abdullah Younus认为选举工作是一个训练场。 他说,“纽约州健康法案”——这是一种建立全州单一付款人制度的立法—的宣传者,“通过选举工作小组熟练掌握了这类工作。”

For all the recent attention to DSA’s upstart electoral success, it’s only one part of the group’s work nationwide. Many chapters don’t engage at all with elections, or are just starting to think about whether they would like to run candidates. Michael I. Esealuka, co-chair of New Orleans DSA, says, “It would be difficult for us as a small chapter to develop the type of accountability mechanisms we need to hold people [we elect] accountable to our socialist vision.”

对于最近对DSA新兴选举成功的关注,这只是该组织在全国范围内的工作的一部分。 许多分部根本不参与选举,或者只是开始思考他们是否想要运作候选人。新奥尔良DSA联合主席Michael I. Esealuka说:“我们作为一个小分部,很难发展出我们所需要的问责机制,让人(我们选举的)对我们的社会主义愿景负责。”

Prior to the victories of Carter, Lee and then Ocasio-Cortez, DSA was perhaps best known for agitating to push Medicare for All into the national spotlight—a campaign adopted by delegates from around the country at DSA’s biennial convention in August 2017 as one of three national political priorities, alongside building electoral power and stronger and more militant unions. Forty-five chapters across 20 states held a weekend of action for Medicare for All in April, tabling at farmers’ markets, hosting public events and, as always, canvassing. On the labor front, DSA chapters in West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma raised money for strike funds to support the militant teacher walkouts this spring, and the national DSA sent an email encouraging members around the country to contribute what they could.

在Carter,Lee和Ocasio-Cortez取得胜利之前,DSA最有名的可能是将全民医疗保障推向国家聚光灯—一个全国各地的代表在2017年8月的DSA双年度大会上采取的作为三个国家政治优先事项之一的运动,以及建立选举权力和更强大和更激进的工会。在20个州的45个分部为4月份的全民医疗保障举行了一个周末行动,向农贸市场提供服务,举办公共活动,并一如既往地进行拉票。在劳工前线,西弗吉尼亚州,肯塔基州和俄克拉荷马州的DSA分会为今年春天的激进教师罢工筹集了罢工资金作为支持,然后全国DSA发送了一封电子邮件,鼓励全国各地的成员尽其所能。

Many individual chapters have their own priorities, reflecting local concerns and political climates. Providence DSA, for example, is campaigning for more democratic control over investor-owned electric utilities. New Orleans DSA has focused on base-building work that includes running clinics to help people deal with medical debt, coordinating with the AFL-CIO in developing young rank-and-file labor leaders, and mending broken brake lights, an excuse used by police in the traffic stops that can be “especially perilous and life-disrupting to undocumented immigrants and PoC [people of color],” as the chapter explains on Facebook.

许多个体分部都有他们自己的优先事项,反映了当地的关注点和政治气候。例如,普罗维登斯DSA正在争取对投资者拥有的电力公司进行更民主的控制。新奥尔良DSA专注于基础建设工作,包括运营诊所以帮助人们处理医疗债务,协调AFL-CIO发展年轻的普通反对派劳工领袖,修补破损的刹车灯,这是警察在交通站点使用的借口,会成为“特别危险和扰乱无证移民和PoC [有色人种]的生活,”分部在Facebook上解释。

Because there are big DSA chapters in cities with expensive housing stock—Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bay Area, for instance—the fight for affordable housing has emerged as a major priority. “Housing justice is probably the biggest issue in Los Angeles; the homelessness crisis is at a tipping point,” says Arielle Sallai, a member of DSA Los Angeles’ steering committee. DSA-LA and other California chapters are canvassing to pass Proposition 10, an initiative on the ballot in November that would loosen a statewide limit on rent control. Similarly, Chicago DSA is supporting a campaign to overturn Illinois’ rent control ban, with the backing of Alderman and DSA member Carlos Ramirez-Rosa.

因为在拥有昂贵住房的城市中有大型DSA分会—例如洛杉矶,芝加哥和湾区—为可负担住房而战斗已成为一个主要优先事项。“住房正义可能是洛杉矶的最大的问题; 无家可归危机正处于临界点,“DSA洛杉矶指导委员会成员Arielle Sallai说道。 DSA-LA和其他加利福尼亚州的分部正在试图通过第10号提案,这是会在11月进行投票的一项举措,将放宽全州范围内对租金控制的限制。同样,在Alderman和DSA成员Carlos Ramirez-Rosa的支持下,芝加哥DSA正在支持推翻伊利诺伊州的租金控制禁令的运动。

On many issues, including housing and homelessness, DSA chapters are well aware that their members often don’t look like the populations most directly affected. Although DSA does not have up-to-date member demographics, it has historically leaned white and male.

在许多问题上,包括住房问题和无家可归问题,DSA分部都清楚地知道,他们的成员往往看起来并不像最直接受影响的人群。 虽然DSA没有最新的成员人口统计数据,但它历来倾向于白人和男性。

Coalition-building is one way to correct for this. “Housing work is a great chance to be part of a radical coalition and talk to as many individuals as possible,” Sallai says. DSA-LA has teamed up with local groups like the LA Tenants Union that have been working for years against gentrification.

联盟建设是纠正这个问题的一种方法。 “住房工作是一个很好的机会,可以成为激进联盟的一部分,并与尽可能多的人交谈,”Sallai说。DSA-LA与洛杉矶租户联盟等本地团体合作,这些团体多年来一直致力于反对住房高档化。

Esealuka, a black woman, is frank about the fact that New Orleans DSA is a majority white organization in a majority black city. “It’s a problem, obviously, but it’s nothing that can’t be overcome,” she says. “It’s not like we have to write DSA off because it’s majority white and majority male. … Because we have 45,000 members [nationwide], we have so much potential to do good in this country. It’s just a matter of being more intentional about embedding ourselves into things that matter to working-class people.”

Esealuka,一位黑人女性,坦率地说新奥尔良DSA是一个在黑人占多数的城市的白人占多数的组织。 “很明显,这是一个问题,但没有什么是无法克服的,”她说。 “这不是说我们必须将DSA写在耻辱柱上,因为它是白人和男性为主的组织。 ……因为我们在全国拥有45,000名会员,所以我们在这个国家有很大的潜力做得更好。这只是一个关于如何更有意的将我们自己融入对工人阶级至关重要的事情的问题。“

Noting the high proportion of women taking on leadership roles in her chapter, Esealuka suggests that all chapters equip members with the organizing skills to develop the leadership of women and people of color. Internally, many chapters have also created specific spaces, such as the national Afrosocialist Caucus or Socialist Feminist working groups, for DSA members who aren’t white or male to feel welcome and build community.

Esealuka注意到在她所在的分部,女性担任领导职务的比例很高,因此Esealuka建议所有分部都要使成员具备组织技能,以发展女性和有色人种的领导能力。在内部,许多分部还创建了特定的空间,例如国家非裔社会主义核心小组或社会女权主义工作组,帮助不是白人或男性的DSA成员感到受欢迎并建立社区。

Though Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) infamously said after Ocasio-Cortez’s primary win that socialist politics can’t work in the Midwest, they’ve certainly found an audience in the heartland. Iowa, for instance, has the highest number of DSA chapters per capita of any state. Members in chapters outside of big blue coastal cities may talk about socialism a little differently than their counterparts and run different campaigns, but they agree on the basics of what they’re fighting for. Chapters in blue cities like Denver are quick to say they don’t automatically find a warm reception just because they’re talking to Democrats, and chapters in red or purple states note they don’t necessarily face open hostility. For the past two years, Central Iowa DSA has marched in the state fair parade through Des Moines, flanked by Trump floats and those from local businesses. “You get thumbs up about Medicare for All and everybody needing healthcare,” says co-chair Joe Ellerbroek. “You might get a middle finger at an ICE protest every once in a while.”

虽然参议员Tammy Duckworth臭名昭着地说,在Ocasio-Cortez的初步胜利之后,社会主义政治不能在中西部地区发挥作用,但他们会明确的在中心地带找到一个观众。例如,爱荷华州的人均DSA分部数量最多。大蓝色沿海城市之外的分部中的成员可能会谈论与他们的同行略有不同的社会主义,并开展不同的活动,但他们同意他们正在为之奋斗的基本价值观。像丹佛这样的蓝色城市的分布很快就说他们不会因为与民主党人谈话而自动找到热情接待,而红色或紫色州的分部指出他们不一定面临公开的敌意。在过去的两年里,爱荷华州中部DSA在德梅因州的州公平游行中游行,被特朗普花车和当地企业围绕。联合主席Joe Ellerbroek说:“你通过全民医疗保健得到了所有需要医疗保健的人的赞美。” “你可能会偶尔在对ICE的抗议中获得一个中指。”


Eleven-year House of Delegates incumbent Jackson Miller sent out a red-baiting flier about his DSA challenger, Lee Carter, in 2017. Carter won anyway.

当了11年的众议院众议员Jackson Miller于2017年向他的DSA挑战者Lee Carter发送了一个红色诱饵传单。无论如何,卡特赢了。(纳粹们抹黑社会主义的套路都一样,中国的纳粹们也是如此抹黑,无耻的把挂羊头卖狗肉的国家资本主义苏联和中国说成社会主义。)

After decades of socialism being nonexistent in mainstream political debates, however, most people simply are not familiar with the term itself. “I didn’t know I was a democratic socialist when I decided to run, and I didn’t know that this group existed,” says Summer Lee. “I just knew that these policies are policies that we need. When you go to black communities, we really are more inclined to socialism. We don’t always have that language in our communities, but we know that these policies are what’s needed for our communities.”

然而,在主流政治辩论中社会主义几十年都不存在之后,大多数人根本就不熟悉这个术语本身。 “当我决定参选时,我不知道我是一个民主社会主义者,我不知道这个群体的存在,”Summer Lee说。 “我只知道这些政策是我们需要的政策。 当你去黑人社区时,我们真的更倾向于社会主义。我们社区并不总是使用这种语言,但我们知道这些政策是我们社区所需要的。“

Asked how they talk about democratic socialism with voters, all seven DSA-endorsed candidates I interviewed offered some variation on the same answer: “I don’t lead with that.”

当被问及他们如何与选民谈论民主社会主义时,我采访的所有七位经过DSA认可的候选人都提出了有一些不同之处的同一个答案:“我不会领导这一点。”

Ocasio-Cortez says she opts instead to “show people what we’re fighting for. What I talk about is Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and housing as a human right. In my interpretation of what democratic socialism is, it is the fight for a basic level of dignity that our society refuses to violate.”

Ocasio-Cortez说,她选择“向人们展示我们正在为之战斗的东西”。 我所说的是全民医疗保障,没有学费的公立大学和住房作为一项人权。在我对民主社会主义是什么的解释中,这是为了争取我们社会拒绝违背的基本尊严水平的斗争。“

Ing says, “Usually, when I talk about money in politics or the government not representing us, that transcends any left-right values. Most people see the world from bottom versus top: Are you with us, or them?”

Ing说,“通常,当我谈论政治中的金钱(政治献金)或没有代表我们的政府时,它超越了任何左右价值观。 大多数人从底层到顶层看世界:你是和我们在一起,还是他们?“

DSA candidates running for office and DSA members knocking doors, then, articulate socialism as a common sense set of practices and beliefs: swearing off corporate donations, supporting big, universal programs that promise to redistribute society’s resources more equitably, and returning decisions to the hands of the people most directly affected. As DSA makes inroads selling the public on the virtues of democratic socialism and infiltrating the halls of power, it will also figure out what to do once it gets there.

DSA候选人进行竞选公职,DSA成员去敲门,然后,将社会主义阐述为一套常识性的实践和信念:终结企业献金,支持大型的,普遍的计划,这些计划承诺更公平地重新分配社会资源,并将决策权还给那些最受直接影响的人。 随着DSA向公众宣传民主社会主义的美德和渗透进权力的大厅,它也将弄清楚一旦到达那里应该怎么做。

For the moment, DSA members and candidates are making the road to a 21st-century American socialism by walking it—and knocking on a few hundred thousand doors along the way.

目前,DSA的成员和候选人正在走向21世纪的美国社会主义之路,并沿着这条路敲了几十万个门。

http://inthesetimes.com/features/dsa_democratic_socialists_of_america_growth_alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders.html

OP-ED: Reconnecting “Reform” and “Revolution:” Socialists in the Mist(OP-ED:重新联系“改良”与“革命”:迷雾中的社会主义者们)

Rosa Luxemburg makes clear that the two concepts “Reform” and “Revolution” are joined at the hip, something all wings of the socialist left tend to forget.

罗莎·卢森堡明确指出,“改良”和“革命”这两个概念是时髦的,也是社会主义左派的所有分支都倾向于忘记的。

By Michael Hirsch

If one thing was clear coming out of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America’s boisterous convention in May, it was that most delegates uniformly consider themselves socialists and aspire to build an anticorporate resistance movement nationwide. So far, so good.

如果美国纽约市民主社会主义者组织在5月份的喧闹的会议中明确表达了一件事,那就是大多数代表一致认为自己是社会主义者,并渴望在全国范围内建立一个反财团抵抗运动。 到现在为止还挺好。

It was also clear a solid majority—including this writer—think some range of electoral activity in support of left-leaning Democratic Party electeds and aspirants is called for, though too few offer even a dollop of sympathy for insurgent independent and third party efforts, which are no less tactical interventions that should never be proscribed. Yet when it comes to propounding a socialist—read anticapitalist—program, those Reds among us who have ever worked in Democratic clubs or in independent electoral efforts rarely if ever push the kinds of demands that challenge the capitalist system at its root. We hesitate at our peril.

同时,明显的是,绝大多数人——包括作者在内——认为支持左倾民主党候选人和有志者的选举活动范围很广,但是很少有人对暴动的独立和第三方的努力表示同情, 认为对这些的战术干预不应该被禁止。 然而,当谈到提出一个社会主义——读做反资本主义——计划时,我们中间曾经在民主俱乐部或独立选举中工作过的那些社会主义者很少能够从根本上推动挑战资本主义制度的各种需要。我们对自己的冒险犹豫不决。

Our reticence is explained in part because the range of the permissible is so circumscribed it becomes self-censorship. We want to appear practical and not alienate allies who agree with us on shorter-term issues and avoid our being caricatured as dreamers and vocal dilettantes, or being larding on by the old rib “resolutionary socialists” or worse.

我们的沉默在一定程度上得到了解释,因为允许的范围是如此受限制,它变成了自我审查。 我们希望看起来切合实际,不要疏远那些在短期问题上与我们达成一致的盟友,避免我们被讽刺为梦想家和不专业的人,或者被形容成老旧的“革命社会主义者”(备注:没有resolutionary这词,强烈怀疑作者笔误,原词是revolutionary)或者更糟。

Add to the fact that the leadership of most unions has no perspective beyond the next election cycle—witness their near total prostration in New York State before the vindictive, corporate-bought Andrew Cuomo and the studied indifference by labor for the excellent Gayle McLaughlin’s uphill fight for Golden State lieutenant governor—or even a potential internal union challenge, and swimming against the current comes with a price. In fact, despite our socialist coloration, we lefties add precious little in actual mass work to programmatic arguments that could spur movements and legislation in an anti-capitalist and genuinely “social” direction.

再加上大多数工会的领导层没有任何超越下一个选举周期的视角的事实—见证他们之前在纽约州面对憎恨的,公司收买的Andrew Cuomo几乎完全衰竭,以及对优秀的Gayle McLaughlin为了金州副州长的艰苦战斗付出的劳动—甚至是潜在的内部联盟挑战漠不关心,而反抗现状是需要付出代价的。事实上,尽管我们有社会主义色彩,我们左派在实际的群众工作中几乎没有添加珍贵的时间表论点,这些论点可以刺激运动和立法进入反资本主义和真正“社会”的方向。

Despite the brave words espoused by two insurgent Democrats addressing the concluding session of the DSA conference, nothing they said was radical in regards to rooting out corporate domination of everyday life. Neither even hinted at systemic challenges to property or social relations.The fault was not theirs, IMO. They were framing in militant terms the short-term bounds of the electorally possible when not playing to the expectations of the crowd. DSA has a higher purpose, but sadly they and we are not meeting it.

尽管两位反叛的民主党人在DSA的会议的总结阶段上提出了勇敢的言论,但他们所说的一切都没有激进到针对根除企业对日常生活的统治。甚至都没有暗示对生产关系或社会关系的系统性挑战。在我看来,这个错误不是他们的。 当他们没有达到人群的期望时,他们在激进的条件下构成了选举可能的短期界限。 DSA有更高的目标,但遗憾的是他们和我们没有达成一致。

Note that everything does not depend on us. Mass movements often are sparked by rank and file leaders with only the most casual relationships to socialist groups or even theory. The old joke that spontaneity means somebody else did the organizing—a good riposte to stage-managed orthodox Leninist preaching—is true enough, but it doesn’t deny the crying need for anti-capitalist theorizing and for political programs whose winning would transcend capitalism. The much vaunted “base building” won’t come from electoral activity alone, nor will extraparliamentary activism writ large without confronting the question of activism for what ends.

请注意,并不是任何事都取决与我们。大众运动往往是由组织中的反对者引发的,他们只与社会主义团体甚至理论有着松散的关系。自发性意味着其他人进行组织是一个古老的笑话—对舞台管理的正统列宁主义讲道的优秀反击—是真实的,但它并不否认对反资本主义理论化和一旦胜利就会超越资本主义的政治纲领的迫切需要。 被大肆吹嘘的“基础建设”不会单独来自选举活动,也不会在没有面对活动主义提出的终点是什么问题的情况下大规模地举行议会外活动。

We can’t just be the best builders of the movements, as worthy a goal as that is. We need a turn toward theory and socialist—read anti-capitalist—program.

我们不能只是这些运动的最佳建设者,虽然这是有价值的目标。 我们需要转向理论和社会主义——读做反资本主义——的计划。

Neither is a blanket demand for “democracy” of much utility, even in the age of a demented Trump and regressive neoliberalism. Of course the mass of people should choose, but choose what? What are the choices? What is the left offering in the way of choice?

公众对“民主”的全面要求也不见得有多大效果,即使在一个疯狂的特朗普和反动的新自由主义时代。当然大众应该选择,但选择什么? 有什么选择? 选择方式中剩下的是什么?

A turn toward theory—actually a course correction, and not initially a major one, I believe—points to the necessity of doing what electoral work ignores and contemporary mass movements miss: a move toward not only advocating for policy solutions but also identifying and addressing root cause, intersectionality and fundamental change.

转向理论——实际上是一个过程修正,而不是最初的主要修正——我认为——指出选举工作忽视的和当代大众运动错失的必要性在于:不仅要倡导政策解决方案,还要确定和解决根本原因,实现交叉性和根本性的变化。

Take the salutary demand for free education from pre-K through college. It’s a good demand—who but a right-wing elitist would oppose it?—but it doesn’t in itself begin a critique of capitalist education, whether in furthering its democratic nature or in challenging curricula. What is gained if business school pedagogy remains unchanged, if economics remains the terrain of free-market ideology, if the social sciences remain compartmentalized, if vocational education is widely available but limited to business’ quotidian needs, and if schooling is largely hermetically sealed from creative work in all but the arts and experimental colleges?

以要求从幼儿园到大学的免费教育为例。这是一个很好的要求—但右翼精英主义者会反对它吗?—但它本身并不是对资本主义教育的批判,无论是在推进其民主性质还是在挑战课程安排方面。 如果商业化的学校教育方式保持不变,如果经济学仍然是自由市场意识形态的领域,如果社会科学仍然被划分为不同分类,如果职业教育可以广泛使用但仅限于商业的“日常需求”,并且如果学校教育在很大程度上与除了艺术和实验学院以外的所有创意工作隔绝?

Or consider the crisis in housing. Sure, we can rightly abrade electeds for not vigorously supporting rent control or get outraged at the rise of luxury housing treated as a trading commodity that leads to hundreds of thousands of vacant lux apartments in cities waiting for high-income buyers even as homelessness swells. Yet at a mass statewide New York housing rally in mid-June demanding rent-stabilization, just-cause eviction laws and lambasting the state’s laggard governor as a witting tool of his real-estate funders, just one speaker made the sage intersectional connect between the housing crisis and related social ills, noting how insufficient housing  is a healthcare issue, too.

或者考虑住房危机。 当然,我们可以正确地反对那些并没有大力支持租金管制的或没有对被视为一种交易商品导致在无家可归的情况大量出现时数十万空置的豪华公寓在等待高收入买家的情况出现的奢侈品房屋的增长感到愤怒的被选举者。然而,在6月中旬纽约全州范围内的大规模要求房屋市场稳定租金,针对驱逐法律并谴责该州落后的州长成为他的地产商金主的工具,只有一位发言人将住房危机和相关的社会弊病联系起来,并指出住房不足也是一个医疗保障问题。

In New York City, we can and should blast the City Council for limiting its oversight to housing authority headaches after the fact and for favoring land use/zoning and public-private development schemes as the sharp edges of housing policy, but we leave buried the old socialist chestnut of nationalizing large private holdings. Our housing crisis stems from corporate control. Who if not us will address that programmatically?

在纽约市,我们可以而且应该鼓励市议会在事后限制其对房屋管理局的头痛的疏忽,并将土地使用/分区和公私合作发展计划作为住房政策的尖锐边缘,但我们埋葬了旧社会主义板栗主张的国有化大型私人持有者。我们的住房危机源于公司控制。谁,如果不是我们将以逐步的方式解决这一问题?

The same weakness persists in the righteous demand of Medicare for All, a policy that is itself a vast improvement over single-payer, but only the beginning of wisdom. Of course Medicare for All would be a body blow to the insurance industry and bring accessible, quality care to many more millions. That’s reason enough to support it, not to mention its capacity to engage millions more in a struggle to win it. But in itself it will do nothing to democratize medicine or collapse the insane specializations that plague the disabled and older, retired Americans for whom primary care physicians are only traffic cops on the road to a plethora of specialists. Much of leisure time is barely leisurely for many seniors, who are on a first-name basis with as many as a dozen of their widely scattered healers. Without de-emphasizing the demand of Medicare for All, a vital and winnable reform, we must advocate for true Socialized Medicine, which includes reducing  private practices to the bare minimum.

同样的弱点仍然存在于对全民医保的正义要求中,这一政策本身就是在单支付者之上的巨大进步,但这只是智慧的开端。当然,全民医保将对保险业构成打击,然后为数百万人提供无障碍的,优质的医疗服务。这足以支持它,更不用说它有能力让数百万人参与赢得它的斗争。但就其本身而言,它无法使医学民主化或摧毁困扰残疾人和老年退休美国人的疯狂专业化,对他们来说初级保健医生只是通往过多专家的道路上的交通警察。对于许多老年人来说,大部分的闲暇时间都不是悠闲的,他们依赖着十几个广泛分布的治疗师。在强调人人享有医疗保险的需求的同时,我们必须倡导真正的社会化医学,其中包括将私人诊所减少到最低限度,这是一项至关重要且可以赢得的改革。

Here’s the problem: it’s as if our socialist politics are religiously understood but inapplicable to “mainstream” politics except as the most moderate of ethical reforms. It’s as though we self-described socialists are Marxists in faith but not so much in fact. At our best we are radicals capable in many admirable cases of critiquing the system sharply enough in thought and on the page, but moving against it only hesitantly and under heavy restraint, explained as realpolitik and excused in some extreme cases as transactional politics, or what is in reality “too little, too late.”

这就是问题所在:就好像我们的社会主义政治被宗教般的理解,但不适用于“主流”政治,除非是最温和的道德改革。就好像我们自我描述的社会主义者在信仰上是马克思主义者,但事实上不是。在我们最好的情况下,我们是能够在许多令人钦佩的案例中激进的在思想和书页上对系统进行了足够严厉的批评,但是只是犹豫不决的并且在严格克制下进行反对行动,被解释为现实政治和在一些极端情况下借口作为交易政治,或者事实上“太少,太晚”了。

We say among ourselves—at least those of us honest enough to say it and not afraid of being branding as sectarians—that Bernie is barely a socialist. We know that while his domestic politics are a breath of fresh air in a fetid clime (though his foreign policy planks are not much removed from the Clintonesque) they are at best rehashed New Deal liberalism. ome sections of the Left are already thinking of how to integrate their work with a possible Bernie boomlet in 2020. That preparatory move may even be tactically wise, facilitating outreach, etc, but it also abrogates any possibility of these Bernie-entranced boosters acting as articulators of an anti-capitalist point of view except over coffee. We indeed have things in common with Our Revolution, the staff-dominated Sanders operation, but our many differences can’t be submerged.

我们在我们之间说—至少我们这些人足够诚实地说出来并且不怕被打上宗派主义者的烙印—伯尼几乎不是社会主义者。我们知道虽然他的国内政治在恶劣的气候中是新鲜空气(尽管他的外交政策板块并没有从克林顿主义那里消除太多),但他们充其量只是新政自由主义。左派的部分人员已经在考虑如何在2020年将他们的工作与可能的伯尼风暴相结合。这种准备行动甚至可能在战术上更加明智,促进展开等,但它也消除了这些伯尼进入的助推器作为反资本主义观点的发生者的任何可能性,除了喝咖啡。我们确实与“我们的革命”,工作人员主导的桑德斯行动有共同之处,但我们的许多分歧不能被淹没。

Note that in my calling for a course correction toward theorizing our politics to develop a rigorous socialist platform for the 21st century, I’m not advocating taking the exit ramp to terminal program mongering, the disease of small sects. I am suggesting that socialists must look at how a systemic critique of capital can be hammered into a popular political program,  one that encompasses what Occupy and Podemos did so well(at least symbolically). Our reall action critique of the depredations of vampire capitalism can instrumentally connect reform to revolution—Andre Gorz’s radical reform, if you will. Otherwise all our work, whether as inside or outside of the Democratic party or a mix of the two–will be just window dressing.

请注意,在我要求修正我们的理论化的政治以发展21世纪的严格的社会主义平台的过程中,我并不主张采用退出坡道进行终端计划贩卖,这是小派别的疾病。 我建议社会主义者们必须考虑如何在一个受欢迎的政治计划中加入系统的对资本的批评,Occupy和Podemos在这方面做得很好的(至少是象征性的)。如果你愿意的话,我们对吸血鬼资本主义掠夺行动的批评可以将改良与革命—Andre Gorz的激进改革联系起来。否则我们所有的工作,无论是在民主党内部还是外部,或两者兼而有之的—都将只是装饰而已。

This means putting more of an emphasis on developing programs, both to complement organizing work and to spur basic education. I’m talking about an internal education effort by DSA and other left organizations that goes beyond trainings to developing critical theory. A lot of discussion at the aforementioned NYDSA convention seemed to be battling shadows. Some comrades chastised others for being insufficiently Marxist by tamping down class struggle ideas and mistakenly heralding reform as of prime value in and of itself. Others treated Marxist categories as so much empty rhetoric that got in the way of real organizing and was blind to the needs of reform, something eminently winnable and capable of a mass following.

这意味着更多地强调发展计划,以补充组织工作和促进基础教育。 我在谈论DSA和其他左派组织的内部教育工作,这些工作超越了培训,发展了批判理论。 上述NYDSA大会上的许多讨论似乎都在与阴影作斗争。 一些战友通过夯实阶级斗争思想,错误地宣称改良本身就是最重要的价值观,从而谴责其他人不够马克思主义。其他人把马克思主义的分类看作是空洞的修辞,妨碍了真正的组织,并且对改革的需求视而不见,而这些需求显然是可以赢得的,并且能够得到大众追随的。

In a less confrontational moment, I believe comrades would agree—or should agree—that “reform” and “revolution” are not counterpoised, and that the revolutionary pantheon from Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Luxemberg, Debs,Gramsci, Lukacs, Alexandra Kollontai, Dubois, C.L.R. James and Michael Harrington (at least the young Michael Harrington) would all agree. Like the arc of the universe, the list is long, but it bends toward justice.

在一个不那么具有对抗性的时刻,我相信战友们会同意—或者应该同意—“改良”和“革命”并不是平衡的,以及来自马克思,恩格斯,考茨基,卢森堡,Debs,葛兰西,Lukacs,Alexandra Kollontai,Dubois,C.L.R. James和Michael Harrington(至少是年轻的Michael Harrington)都同意。 就像宇宙的弧线一样,这个清单很长,但却向正义倾斜。

We can even learn from the ventures of Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, who, while no revolutionary either in theory or inclination, can be credited with contributing to the objective conditions for a nationwide upsurge by building a mass extraparliamentary movement as a catalyst for, and an adjunct to, a future left Labour government.

我们甚至可以从英国的Jeremy Corbyn的冒险中学习,他虽然在理论上或倾向上都不是革命的,但可以通过建立一个大规模的议会外运动作为催化剂和附属物来促进全国范围内的高潮需要的客观条件, 最终在未来形成一个左派工党政府。

Where to begin? We needn’t reinvent the wheel. Reintegrating Rosa Luxemberg’s pioneering work is no stretch, either. Her writing is largely in print, and the second volume of her projected multi-volume collected works has just been realized, which is fortuitous, given that January 2019 will mark the 100th anniversary of her murder by the proto-Fascist Freikorps under the direction of Germany’s then governing right Social Democrats.

从哪里开始? 我们不需要重新发明轮子。 重新整合罗莎卢森堡的开创性工作也没有什么进展。她的作品大部分都是印刷品,她的预计有多卷的整合作品的第二卷刚刚出现,这是偶然的,2019年1月将是她被法西斯主义的Freikorps在当时的右派德国社会民主党的指使下谋杀100周年纪念。

The sublime socialist makes clear that the two concepts “Reform” and “Revolution” are joined at the hip, something all wings of the socialist left tend to forget. The tragedy of social democracy for her was the Second International’s disengaging of reform from revolution in practice if not in theory, resulting in the horror of all but three member parties supporting their own national bourgeoisies’ murderous land grab efforts in the catastrophic World War One.

这个崇高的社会主义者清楚地表明,“改良”和“革命”这两个概念是时髦的,也是社会主义左派的所有分支都倾向于遗忘的。对她而言,社会民主的悲剧是第二国际在实践中将改良与革命脱离,如果不是理论上的话,导致除了三个成员党之外的所有人都支持他们自己的民族资产阶级在灾难性的第一次世界大战中为了争抢土地而屠杀。

If revolution absent reform is fools’ gold, reform absent an anticapitalist end is species extinction.

如果没有改良的革命就是傻瓜的黄金,那么没有反资本主义终点的改良就是物种灭绝。

As Marx and Engels put it in The Manifesto, the outcome of class struggle was “either a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or the common ruin of the contending classes.” Pick one!

正如马克思和恩格斯在共产党宣言中所说的那样,阶级斗争的结果“要么是整个社会的革命性的重建,要么是相互竞争的阶级的共同毁灭。”选一个!

Luxemburg put it another way: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”

卢森堡用另一种方式说:“资产阶级社会站在十字路口,要么过渡到社会主义,要么退回到野蛮。”

True that! We 21st century Reds must do better.

的确如此! 我们21世纪的社会主义者们必须做得更好。

https://www.dsausa.org/op_ed_reconnecting_reform_and_revolution_socialists_in_the_mist

Democratic Socialism Is About Democracy(民主社会主义是关于民主的)

There are lots of ways to talk about democratic socialism. Some focus on fairness and equality. Others stress the need to fix the “irrationalities” of capitalism. Still others speak of “convert[ing] hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness.”

有很多谈论民主社会主义的方式。 一些人关注公平和平等。 其他人则强调需要解决资本主义的“非理性”问题。 还有一些人谈论“将歇斯底里的痛苦转化为普通的不幸”。

The democratic socialist du jour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently gave her own definition on Stephen Colbert’s show:

民主社会主义者Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez最近在Stephen Colbert’的节目上给出了她自己的定义:

I believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live. So what that means is health care as a human right. It means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade school education if they so choose it. And, you know, I think that no person should be homeless if we can have public structures and public policies to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States.

我相信,在一个现代的,道德的,富裕的社会中,美国的任何人都不应该太穷以致不能生活。 那么这意味着医疗保障是一项人权。这意味着,无论你出生在哪里,每个孩子如果愿意,都应该有机会接受大学或商业学校的教育。 而且,你知道,我认为如果我们能够拥有让人们拥有家园和食物,并在美国过上有尊严的生活的公共结构和公共政策,那么任何人都不会无家可归。

Not bad at all.

一点也没错。

But here’s what I’d emphasize: democratic socialism, at its core, is about deepening democracy where it exists and introducing democracy where it is absent. In countries like the US, that means increasing the scope of popular control in the political arena and broadening it out to include the social and economic spheres.

但这是我要强调的:民主社会主义的核心是在民主存在的地方增强民主,在缺少民主的地方引入民主。在像美国这样的国家,这意味着要扩大政治领域的民众控制范围,并将民主扩大到包括社会和经济领域中。

This may sound fairly innocuous — who isn’t for democracy these days? But democratic socialists have something more far-reaching in mind. To us, democracy is not simply a banal amalgamation of procedures, an uncontroversial set of norms and rules that everyone can get behind. It is the quite radical idea that ordinary people — not experts, not elites, not their “betters” — can rule themselves. It is the word we use to describe the flattening of steep hierarchies, the shattering of structures that confer undue wealth and power and privilege.

这可能听起来相当无害—这些天谁不是为了民主? 但民主社会主义者的想法更为深远。 对我们来说,民主不仅仅是程序的平庸合并,或每个人都可以抛弃的无争议的规范和规则。 这是一个非常激进的想法,普通人—不是专家,不是精英,不是他们中间的“更好的人”—可以自我统治。这是我们用来描述将陡峭等级制度扁平化,破坏赋予了过度的财富,权力和特权的结构的词。

When democracy is on the march, it lays in its path state despots and private autocrats. It rips decision-making power away from the corporate titan, wrests the billy club out of the beat cop’s hands, divests the domineering husband of his authority. It brings the imperial power to its knees and lifts up the colonial subject, the slave, the worker.

当民主在行军时,它就会进入政府暴君和私人独裁者们(也就是私人老板)的领地。它将决策权从公司巨头手中夺走,将棍棒从殴打人民的警察手中夺走,剥夺了霸权的丈夫的权威。 它使帝国屈服,抬起殖民主体(被殖民者),奴隶,工人。

Democratic socialists draw their lineage to this long history of bottom-up struggles. In previous eras, kings and churches reigned over their subjects. With the advent of capitalism, the chains of feudalism were broken. But new forms of domination emerged. Those who owned the means of economic activity — the factories, the mines, the railroads — enjoyed extraordinary power over those who only had their labor to sell.

民主社会主义者们将自己的起源归结为自下而上斗争的悠久历史。 在以前的时代,国王们和教会们统治着他们的臣民。随着资本主义的出现,封建主义的锁链被打破了。 但是出现了新的奴役形式。 拥有经济活动资料(生产资料)的人—工厂,矿山,铁路—对那些只有劳动力可供出售的人享有特别巨大的权力。

The socialist movement — organized through labor parties, radical trade unions, and other working-class associations — arose in response. Socialists took the Enlightenment ideals of autonomy and self-determination to their logical conclusion and asked, if all humans are equal, what gives one the right to arbitrarily rule over another? Why should capital be king?

社会主义运动—通过工人政党,激进的工会和其他工人阶级组织—作出回应。 社会主义者把自治和自决的启蒙理想带到了他们的逻辑结论中,并且问,如果所有人都是平等的,那么是什么赋予了一个人任意统治另一个人的权利? 资本为什么应当成为国王?

That basic idea animated democratic socialists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

这个基础思想在整个十九世纪和二十世纪激励了民主社会主义者。

Early European socialist parties fought class-based voting restrictions and controls on press freedoms. Eugene Debs, the tribune of American socialism, denounced World War I as an anti-democratic escapade and called for the toppling of the “Junkers of Wall Street.” Socialists organized militant labor movements that replaced workplace despotism with the rudiments of democratic rights (Ford Motor Company, to take just one example, had employed spies and goons to keep workers in line). Bayard Rustin, the socialist civil rights leader, contributed essential tactical know-how to bring down a racial caste system that smothered American democracy. Socialist feminists ripped down the walls between the public and the private and asserted the need to place romantic partners on equal footing. More recently, democratic socialists have spearheaded the resistance to colonialism in Jamaica, corporate rule in Bolivia, and anti-abortion laws in Argentina.

早期的欧洲社会主义政党对基于阶级的投票限制和对新闻自由的控制进行了斗争。 美国社会主义护民官Eugene Debs谴责第一次世界大战是一种反民主的行为,并呼吁推翻“华尔街的容克贵族们”。社会主义者们组织了激进的劳工运动,用民主权利的雏形取代了工作场所的专制( 举一个例子,福特汽车公司雇用间谍和暴徒来使工人们不越界)。社会主义民权领袖Bayard Rustin提供了必要的战术知识,以摧毁一个扼杀美国民主的种族等级制度。社会女权主义者摧毁了公众与私人之间的高墙,并宣称需要将浪漫的伴侣们置于平等地位。最近,民主社会主义者率先抵抗牙买加的殖民主义,玻利维亚的公司统治以及阿根廷的反堕胎法律。

But despite significant advances, we’re still living with many of the despotisms that early socialists abhorred.

但是,尽管取得了重大进展,我们仍然生活在许多被早期社会主义者们所厌恶的专制主义中。

The American workplace is one of the most glaring examples. The place where most people spend the bulk of their adult lives, it’s also a place where workers relinquish the most basic of democratic freedoms. Bosses can fire their subordinates for nearly any reason. They can tell workers what to say and what not to say. They can decide whether to keep the worksite where it is or move it abroad. They alone determine how to spend the company’s profits and invest the resources the enterprise has generated.

美国的工作场所是最明显的例子之一。 大多数人在大部分成年生活中度过的地方,也是工人放弃最基本的民主自由的地方。几乎使用任何理由,老板都可以解雇他们的下属。他们可以告诉工人能说什么和不能说什么。他们可以决定是将工作场所保留在何处或将其移至国外(也就是竟次)。他们独裁决定如何花费公司的利润并投资企业产生的资源。

Democracy says that people should have equal control over the decisions that affect their lives. Capitalism laughs in its face.

民主说人们应当平等地控制影响他们生活的决定。资本主义笑了起来。

Or consider a more democratic space, the political arena. Despite formal guarantees of one person one vote — itself a triumph of past democratic movements — the wealth inequalities that capitalism creates inevitably bleed over into the traditional political process. The rich bankroll politicians, fund think tanks, and dispatch lobbyists. They influence which would-be politicians rise and fall, which ideas circulate widely, and what kinds of policies elected officials prioritize.

或者考虑一个更民主的空间,即政治舞台。尽管正式保证一人一票—这本身就是过去民主运动的胜利—资本主义创造的财富不平等不可避免地渗透到传统政治进程中。资金丰富的政客,被资助的智囊团和派遣游说者。它们会影响政客们的兴衰,哪些思想得到广泛传播,以及民选官员优先考虑哪种政策。

On top of that, business interests have a crucial trump card: they control the levers of the economy. At certain moments in the history of capitalist democracy — particularly in the decades after World World II, in countries like Sweden — organized labor was strong enough and left parties powerful enough that the historically disenfranchised spoke with a relatively strong political voice. Yet because business leaders could effectively bring the economy to a standstill, their interests had to be heeded. “Business confidence” won out over “political equality.”

最重要的是,商业利益相关者们有一个关键的王牌:它们控制着经济的杠杆。在资本主义民主历史的某些时刻—特别是在二战之后的几十年里,在瑞典这样的国家—有组织的工人们足够强大,左派政党们足够强大,以至于历史上被剥夺权利者的政治声音相对强大。然而,由于商业领袖们可以有效地使经济陷入停滞,他们的利益必须得到关注。 “商业信心”盖过了“政治平等”。

To socialists, this is unacceptable. We simply can’t tolerate a social arrangement that systematically domesticates democracy — especially in areas so central to people’s daily lives.

对社会主义者们来说,这是无法接受的。我们根本无法容忍有系统地驯化民主的社会安排——特别是在人们的日常生活中如此重要的地方。

The radical reforms we advocate are all intended to increase the amount and degree of decisions, relationships, and structures in society that operate according to democratic principles. Capital’s control over investment gives it too much say over the direction of the political economy; we should socialize key industries and foster worker cooperatives. The immigration system makes people into pariahs; we should abolish ICE and allow everyone to vote, undocumented or not. Relying on private housing gives developers unjustifiable leverage over the means of people’s survival; we should build millions of units of social housing. US imperialism brutally undermines democratic movements in countries around the world; we should dismantle America’s empire. The existence of fossil-fuel companies threatens our ability to even make popular decisions in the future; we should put them out of business.

我们提倡的激进改革的目的是增加按照民主原则运作的社会决策,关系和结构的数量和程度。资本对投资的控制使其对政治经济的方向有太多的发言权了; 我们应该把关键行业社会化,并扶植工人合作企业。现在的移民制度使人们成为贱民; 我们应该废除ICE,允许每个人投票,无论有没有证件。对私人住房的依赖给开发商带来了对人们生存资料的不合理的杠杆作用; 我们应该建立数百万单位的社会住房。美国帝国主义残酷地破坏了世界各国的民主运动; 我们应该拆除这个在美洲的帝国。化石燃料公司的存在威胁着我们在未来做出大众决策的能力; 我们应该让他们关门。

Those with power don’t like to be stripped of it. Whether it’s kings or patriarchs, capitalists or cops, the threat of a shift toward greater equality of power can prompt a ferocious counter-attack. But to retreat in the face of elite opposition is to accept a social order still strewn with master-servant relationships. A better world, a more democratic world, is possible.

那些有权力的人不喜欢被剥夺权力。无论是国王还是家长,资本家还是警察,转向更大的权力平等的威胁都可能引发凶猛的反击。但是,面对精英们的反对而退却就是接受一个仍然充斥着主奴关系的社会秩序。一个更好的世界,一个更民主的世界,是可能实现的。

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/07/democratic-socialism-democracy-ocasio-cortez

社会主义者是如何思考的——介绍唯物主义并批判唯心主义

想要成为一个社会主义者,光是背诵马克思恩格斯等理论家的著作可是远远不够的,事实上,如果只会死记硬背,只会成为只会闹笑话的教条主义者。换句话说,只有知道这些理论是如何思考出来的,以及如何运用这些理论分析社会问题,才能成为一个合格的社会主义者。

而社会主义者的思维模式是怎样的呢?是一个很多人都听说过,但却几乎没什么人真正理解的词——唯物主义。

马克思的唯物主义思想源自哲学家费尔巴哈(来源:马克思主义导论):

路德维希·费尔巴哈是“唯物主义者”——他拒斥自己所认为的黑格尔哲学中的“唯心主义”。他不是将现实视为先在观念的反映,而是将物质现实视为先在的,并从中产生观念。

简单来说,就是“物质决定意识”:一个人的思想观念并不是其出生时就自带的,而是后天社会环境影响的结果,例如政治制度,经济制度,家庭条件,社会文化,地理环境等等,而在这其中,家庭条件和社会文化又是政治制度和经济制度的结果,一个社会中的主流文化必然是与其制度适配的,制度需要文化以维护自身,如果不适配,那么制度本身离崩溃也就不远了(当然,不适配的情况是很少见的);当然,文化也需要制度以维护自身,当制度发生改变之后,不适配的文化也就无法维持,并很快消散。

不过,上面说的只是一个大趋势,具体到个人来说,很多时候个人的命运都会被偶然因素所左右,也就是运气,例如出生在怎样的家庭里就是偶然的,是否被罪犯袭击也是偶然的。但要注意的是,个人身上的偶然是由社会的必然造成的,个人的灾难背后是社会的灾难,例如穷困是因为系统性的压迫制度造成的(例如资本主义制度),而性犯罪的背后是私有制父权压迫制度。如果有人对这两点有疑问,请自行翻看我博客上的社会主义理论。

当然人也不是木偶,社会会影响并改变人,人也同样会影响并改变社会,这就是马克思所说的“人具有主观能动性”。但个人的力量相对于社会来说是非常弱小的,所以被压迫的人们要联合起来才能改变社会。

将唯物主义用在历史分析上,就形成了历史唯物主义:

历史不是由与个人无关的社会、经济和政治力量所创造的。社会、经济和政治力量都是由人民的活动和生活所组成的。人民创造了历史。但是,人们不是随心所欲地创造历史。人们所存于其中的经济、社会以及政治结构规定着他们的创造活动。

关于历史唯物主义,最有名的一部使用历史唯物主义逻辑进行分析的著作就是《枪炮,病菌与钢铁》了:一个民族的命运,不是单靠自我奋斗就能决定的;他们所在的自然环境,早就注定了他们在几千年后将会成为征服者还是被征服者。(国家投胎指南:”生在哪里”比”认谁当爹”更重要 |《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》

有人可能已经想到了:如果按照唯物主义思维对社会问题进行分析,那么问题的根源就会指向当前制度,这很明显对于剥削阶级来说是不利的(无论是政治剥削阶级还是经济剥削阶级),所以剥削阶级不会喜欢唯物主义,而会拥抱唯心主义。

的确如此,宗教就是典型的唯心主义思想,特别是一神教,把一切都归咎于一个人格化的上帝,人只是上帝的奴隶(请告诉我羔羊和奴隶有什么区别),否定人能对社会造成影响,鼓吹跪下来服从一个根本不存在的神,不加思考的接受“神的话语”,是彻头彻尾的唯心主义。很明显,斯大林教和毛贼神教这类鼓吹大救星救世主的思想也是一神教,也是唯心主义的。

而社会主义基于唯物主义,所以和宗教从根本上就是不兼容的,社会主义者要么是非信神者(无神论者),要么是极度世俗化的教徒(把教义当神话故事看待的那种教徒),而绝不可能是虔诚的教徒。因此,社会主义也一直被教会和虔诚教徒们所痛恨,特别是被华人基督徒们(余杰王怡刘军宁苏小和之流)所痛恨。

有人说:“资本主义也非常痛恨社会主义,那么资本主义也是喜欢唯心主义的了?”

没错!看看那些历史上和现实中出现的为资本主义洗地的理论就知道了:

最早为资本主义洗地的,当属新教,事实上新教本身就是新生资产阶级拿来对抗旧封建土地贵族的工具,新教把资产阶级的巨量财富说成“勤俭节约得来的”(用唯物主义思考即可发现,个人如何勤俭节约也不可能拥有巨量财富,因为个人的劳动创造的财富是极为有限的,受到个人有限的时间精力的限制,更别说富人从来不勤俭节约。),后来由马克思韦伯写了本集大成的《新教伦理与资本主义精神》,把所谓的新教伦理吹捧成资本主义精神的根基,当然这套破烂现在除了虔诚新教徒之外基本没人买账了。

然后登场的洗地理论是马尔萨斯的“人口过剩论”,他把资本主义制造的贫困说成是“人口过剩”的结果,并且主张人口必然以及一定过剩(用唯物主义思考即可发现,这种狗屁完全无视了生产力的不断发展以及穷人们也能通过劳动创造财富,是资本主义故意制造失业大军以压低工资和控制工人从而造成贫困),反对帮助穷人(相当纳粹了),后来这套破烂也逐渐臭街了(在中国除外,共匪进行计划生育的时候就使用并推广了这套破烂)。

和马尔萨斯同时登场的,还有斯宾塞主义。斯宾塞主义由英国的赫伯特斯宾塞提出,后来他扯上达尔文的自然选择理论为其破烂背书(达尔文很明确的说过自然选择理论不能用于人类社会内部,并且适者是特定自然环境下的适者,而不是某个人为制度下的胜者),因此又被不恰当的称作“社会达尔文主义”,斯宾塞主义认为自由市场是公平的,就像大自然一样,起点平等,优胜劣汰(用唯物主义思考即可发现,这种纳粹狗屁的“起点平等”前提是根本不存在的,贫富悬殊在当时和现在绝大部分社会中都是既成事实,起点完全不平等,至于所谓的优胜劣汰更是鬼扯,资本主义下的竞争是逆淘汰的,胜出的都是为了利润没下限的,而且人类社会本就不应扯什么优胜劣汰,每个人都是平等的,而且所谓的优劣是后天的资源环境和运气决定的,这根本不是个人能左右的),后来这种纳粹狗屁也随着社会主义者的战斗和纳粹的战败而臭街了(Well,实际上相当多的老板们和精神老板们还是这套纳粹价值观,但至少他们大部分时候都不敢明说了)。

这些都臭街了之后呢,奥地利芝加哥学派的垃圾就登场了。他们凭空捏造出一个没有剥削,没有压迫,老板们都是大善人,绝对不会为了利润戕害人权,绝不会为了利润制造失业大军,绝对不会为了利润污染环境破坏生态,绝对不会为了利润游说政府侵蚀民主,绝对不会为了利润做掉其他竞争者然后实现垄断的“自由市场”(用唯物主义思考即可发现,这种建立在完全利他之上的“自由市场”完全没可能存在,可笑的是他们是鼓吹人只会利己的)。任何资本主义的问题,都被他们说成是因为政府或工会或社会主义者进行干预,破坏了他们完美的”自由市场“造成的。很明显,按照他们的脑残逻辑,一个没有政府只有他们神圣的私企的社会是最好的,这就是自由意志主义和其衍生的无政府资本主义这类纳粹的由来。可笑的是他们同时鼓吹法治,但法治本身就要求一个强有力的能够制止他们神圣的私企作恶的政府,这和他们鼓吹的小政府又是冲突的,哈哈哈哈(用唯物主义思考即可发现,所谓的法治本身就是政治的产物,更准确的说是力量博弈的结果,在老板们的力量远大于个人的情况下(芝加哥哈巴狗们敌视民主敌视独立工会反对福利国家,在这种社会中老板们的力量必然远大于个人,例如中国,法律怎么可能不为老板服务呢?)。奥地利芝加哥哈巴狗们的垃圾借助上世纪70年代末爆发的经济停滞以新自由主义的名义席卷世界,结果?结果就是世界上最富有的8个人的财富总量相当于最穷困的50%的人的财富总量,经济危机席卷全球并且长期走不出,绝望的人民在社会主义缺位的情况下倒向法西斯主义,至于这其中因为福利被削减而被饿死冻死病死的人,光中国就有几亿了!

同时,特别是在美国和中国,还流行所谓的成功学,成功学鼓吹”努力奋斗就能成功“,把失败的责任推到个人身上,当然用唯物主义思考就会发现社会制度环境资源运气等因素比所谓的”努力奋斗“更重要,甚至”努力奋斗“的思想也必须要在一定的社会环境下才能出现在一个人的头脑中,这世界上大部分富人都是来自中上层,所谓的白手起家不过是个骗人的鬼话而已,穷人通过”努力奋斗“暴富的概率还没买彩票中头奖的概率高呢。

还有一种比较有欺骗性的唯心主义理论是文化决定论。文化决定论的鼓吹者会以”文化是后天的“为由否定其唯心主义的本质,但他们把文化当作问题的根源而拒绝探寻文化形成的原因,实际上就是唯心主义,而鼓吹文化决定论和鼓吹种族主义是一个效果(因为都是唯心主义,把社会的问题推到个人身上)。举个例子:https://plus.google.com/+LynxEvil/posts/ckG6QDtknRB,这个白痴说黑人穷困是因为”黑人文化“的问题,但为什么黑人会形成这种文化?是什么导致了黑人形成这种文化?这白痴认为没有为什么,等于说黑人天生如此,和鼓吹种族主义的效果是一致的。当然事实是黑人穷困完全是被压迫的结果,跟所谓的”黑人文化“毫无关系:(我在监狱里阅读了《新吉姆克劳》。这改变了我的生活)I read The New Jim Crow in jail. It changed my life

唯物主义是社会主义的思想基础,当你接受了唯物主义,你就能很轻松的接受社会主义,同时不被资本主义和宗教等唯心主义破烂欺骗。

Why Socialists Should Believe in Human Nature(为什么社会主义者应该相信人性)

Let’s set a scene. You’re with your extended family, and discussion meanders to an observation about you. Someone notes that, “Hey, on Facebook, it looks like you been going to protests — looks like you’ve been casting aspersions on capitalism, American imperialism, Ezra Klein. You’ve been using words like neoliberalism and reading Trotsky. It seems like you’re a socialist — maybe even be a commie?”
 

让我们设置一个场景。你和你的大家庭在一起,讨论中提到了对你的观察。有人注意到,“嘿,在Facebook上,看起来你一直在抗议—看起来你一直在抨击资本主义,美国帝国主义,Ezra Klein。 你一直在使用新自由主义和正在阅读读托洛茨基这样的词。看起来你是一个社会主义者—甚至可能是一个共产主义者?“

Someone at this gathering immediately responds to this revelation with disdain — maybe a cousin who overdosed on econ classes at college. This cousin turns to address you: “Socialism is all well and good on paper. Caring, sharing, all sounds great. But you’re preaching to the wrong species. Humans aren’t hippies. They’re selfish and care only about themselves — hence war, plunder, exploitation, violence. With the raw materials that are human beings, you’ll never build anything other than what we have today.”

在这次聚会中,有人立即回应这一启示,不屑一顾的—也许是一位在大学里上了过量经济课的堂兄。这位堂兄转过身来对你说:“社会主义在纸面上一切都很好。 关怀,分享,听起来都很棒。 但是你正在向错误的物种布道。人类不是嬉皮士。 他们是自私的,只关心自己—因此有了战争,掠夺,剥削,暴力。拿着组成人类的原材料,除了我们今天所拥有的东西之外,你永远建造不了其他任何东西。“

When confronted with this objection, I’m guessing that most of us respond in roughly the same way — something like, “Look, cuz: the humans you know, they are monsters. Not only because you only hang out with douchebags, but also because you only know ‘capitalist man.’ Capitalist man sucks. But socialist man, on the other hand — he would be caring and compassionate.”

当面对这个反对意见时,我猜我们大多数人都以大致相同的方式回应—比如,“看,因为:你认识的人,他们是怪物。 不仅因为你只和二逼们一起出去玩,还因为你只知道’资本主义者’。资本主义者很糟糕。但另一方面,社会主义者 —他会关心别人和富有同情心。“

Finishing with a flourish, we’d probably say something like, “The bottom line is, there is no such thing as human nature.” Humans are made, they aren’t born.

以一个吸引人的语句作为结尾,我们可能会说,“最重要的是,没有人性这种东西。”人类是被制造的,而不是天生就是如此。

In short, in response to the argument that humans are inherently competitive and selfish, you argued that in fact, there are no attributes or drives that adhere in humans. There is no such thing as a human nature. Let’s call this the “Blank Slate Thesis.”

简而言之,为了回应人类具有内在的竞争性和自私性的论点,你认为事实上,没有任何属性或驱动力可以固定在人类身上。没有人性这东西。 我们称之为“白板理论”。

The Blank Slate Thesis is wrong. It’s the wrong way to confront your cousin’s objection to socialism, and it’s the wrong way to defend the possibly of another type of society.

白板理论是错误的。这是对付堂兄反对社会主义观点的错误方式,而这是捍卫另一种可能的社会的错误方式。

The Moral Problem

道德问题

The Blank Slate Thesis leads socialists into three kinds of insoluble problems; three difficulties that reveal that most of us don’t even believe that there is no such thing as a human nature, even if we’ve made the opposite argument to stubborn cousins. There’s a moral difficulty, there’s an analytical difficulty, and there’s a political difficulty.

白板理论引导社会主义者们陷入三种无法解决的问题; 三个难题表明我们大多数人甚至不相信没有人性这种东西,即使我们对固执的堂兄做出了相反的论证。存在道德上的难题,存在分析上的难题,并且存在政治上的难题。

First, the moral difficulty. The thesis that humans have no inherent human nature makes our moral project incoherent.

一是道德难题。 人类没有固有人性的理论使我们的道德项目模糊不清。

By this, I mean one very simple thing. When you or I look at the world around us and find that something is amiss, that something immoral is afoot, we fixate on certain elemental forms of deprivation.

这么说吧,我的意思是一个非常简单的事情。 当你或我看到周围的世界并发现某些事情不对劲,那些不道德的事情正在发生时,我们会注意某些基本的剥夺形式。

People are deprived of the basic things that they need in order to reproduce themselves comfortably. Many people in this world go to sleep hungry. They’re worried they may not survive their next pregnancy, their next illness, their next marriage. They’re worried that the oceans may rise to flood their home. They work meaningless jobs for petty tyrants. They can’t send their children to decent schools.

人们被剥夺了他们所需要的以便舒适地再生产自己的基本资源。这世界上的很多人都饿着肚子睡觉。他们担心他们可能无法在下次怀孕,下次疾病,下次婚姻中幸存下来。他们担心海洋可能会淹没他们的家园。他们为小暴君们做着毫无意义的工作。他们不能把孩子送到体面的学校。

We agree that these things are terrible, they ought to be eliminated from our world. But you think these things are outrageous because you correctly believe that the people living in these conditions must themselves be outraged.

我们同意这些事情是糟糕的,它们应该从我们的世界中被消除。但是你认为这些事情是令人愤怒的,因为你正确地认为生活在这些环境下的人们他们自己必须被激怒。

You believe that the average human being should not be forced to live impoverished, stunted lives because you impute to the average human being certain unshakeable interests — being fed when hungry, quenched when thirsty, free when dominated.

你相信普通人不应该被迫生活在贫困中,以及发育不良的生活中,因为你把认为人有着均等的不可动摇的利益—饥饿时被喂饱,口渴时能解渴,主导自己时是自由的。

Consider the glorious socialist invocation, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.” That’s a universal injunction. And why is that compelling? Because we all know that nobody likes being in chains.

考虑一下这个光荣的社会主义口号,“全世界的工人们团结起来,除了锁链你们没有什么可失去的。”这是一个普遍的命令。为什么这引人注目? 因为我们都知道没有人喜欢被束缚。

The slogan is not, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. Unless, in some cultures, people like being in chains, in which case, we demand that those people be allowed to keep their chains.”

口号不是,“全世界的工人们团结起来,你除了锁链没有什么可失去的。 除非在某些文化中,人们喜欢被束缚,在这种情况下,我们要求允许这些人保留他们的锁链。“

This belief that these universal interests exist is rooted in a belief that humans universally are everywhere basically the same. You believe that people are meaningfully animated by their human nature whatever the influence of culture or history on them.

认为这种普遍利益存在的这种信念植根于这样一种信念,即人类普遍在每个地方都是基本相同的。 你相信无论文化或历史对他们的影响如何,他们都有着有意义的本性。

The Analytical Problem

分析问题

So that’s the first point. Our moral projects are normative projects that require a commitment to some model of what human beings demand everywhere by virtue of their very nature.

所以这是第一点。 我们的道德项目是规范性项目,这要求承诺人类因其本性而在所有地方都需要某种模式。

Second, an analytical point. If humans were blank slates, it would be very difficult to make much sense of the laws of motion of human societies. It would lead to an analytical impasse.

第二,一个分析点。 如果人类是白板,那么就很难理解人类社会的运动规律。 这将导致分析陷入僵局。

As Vivek Chibber recently argued, socialists fixate on class because class analysis holds diagnostic and prognostic insight. Both of these claims are versions of a more general claim that socialists make about human history, which is referred to as “historical materialism.”

正如Vivek Chibber最近提出的那样,社会主义者注重阶级,因为阶级分析具有进行诊断和预测的洞察力。 这两种主张都是社会主义者对人类历史的更普遍的主张的版本,这被称为“历史唯物主义”。

The claim is that given certain information about how the total pie in any given society is produced — about who does the producing, who does the appropriating, who owns, who rents, who works — we can make certain inferences about who has power and who is powerless, about who will do well for themselves and who will do poorly.

这一声称是关于任何一个特定社会中的总馅饼是如何产生的—关于谁生产,谁分配,谁拥有,谁出租,谁工作—我们可以做出关于谁有权力和谁没有权力,以及关于谁会为自己做得好,谁会做得很差的推论。

We can say something intelligent, in other words, about the rhythms of economic life in that society, about the character of political conflict that might emerge, and even about the nature of ideas or ideologies that agents in that society will find compelling.

我们可以说一些聪明的东西,换句话说,关于社会中经济生活的节奏,可能出现的政治冲突的特征,甚至是社会中的积极参与者会发现的引人注目的思想或意识形态的本质。

What’s relevant for our purposes is that it is impossible to make this argument without being committed to some stable expectations about what humans are like across time and across space. At its essence, historical materialism is a set of claims about how an abstract human is likely to behave when she finds herself with or without certain resources and arrayed against other humans who are similarly or differently positioned.

与我们的目的相关的是,如果不致力于对人类在跨越时间和空间的情况下的某些稳定期望,就不可能做出这一论证。从本质上说,历史唯物主义是关于一个抽象的人类在发现自己有或没有某些资源时会如何表现并且与其他类似或不同位置的人排列在一起的主张。

If you take out the anchoring model of what humans are like in the abstract, if you reject any and all claims about human nature, the whole edifice comes crashing down. You lose the ability then to make sense of these core questions.

如果你在抽象中取出关于人类是怎样的的锚定模型,如果你拒绝任何和所有的关于人性的主张,那么整个大厦就会崩溃。你失去了理解这些核心问题的能力。

Anyone who wants to change society has to ask: why are some people poor? Why are other people rich? Why are some people powerful? Are other people powerless? How do we counter the power of the powerful? If you take out the anchoring model, human societies become nothing more than a blooming, buzzing, confusion of an infinite number of hierarchies, roles, ideas, beliefs, and rituals, etc.

任何想要改变社会的人都要问:为什么有些人穷困? 为什么其他人富有? 为什么有些人有权力? 其他人没有权力吗? 我们如何抵抗掌权者的权力? 如果你拿出锚定模型,那么人类社会就变成了无数盛开,嗡嗡,混乱的层次,角色,观念,信仰和仪式等元素。

People on the Left are very fond (and rightly so) of quoting thesis eleven from Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” Thesis ten-and-three-quarters is definitely, “If you want to change the world, you have to make sense of it first.” The Blank Slate Thesis makes that impossible.

左派们非常喜欢(并且也是正确地)从马克思的“费尔巴哈提纲”中引用提纲第11篇:“哲学家只解释世界,而关键在于改变世界。”提纲的十分之四和四分之三肯定的是,“如果你想要改变这个世界,你必须首先理解它。”白板理论使这变得不可能。

The Political Problem

政治问题

So we’ve had a moral problem, and we’ve had an analytical problem. The third problem is a political problem: the Blank Slate Thesis leads to ruinous political analysis. It makes it very difficult for socialists to apprehend the tasks ahead of us in a non-socialist world. It leads to bad diagnoses and bad strategy.

所以我们有道德问题,而且我们有分析问题。 第三个问题是政治问题:白板理论通向毁灭性的政治分析。这使得社会主义者很难理解我们在非社会主义世界中面临的任务。 它会导致糟糕的诊断和糟糕的策略。

What do I mean by this? Why would our position on human nature bear on our ability to win people to our politics? Let’s start with some sobering reminders first. We live in a society in which our politics are not mainstream.

这是什么意思? 为什么我们对人性的立场会影响我们赢得人们认可我们的政策的能力? 让我们先从一些清醒的提醒开始。我们生活在一个我们的政策不占主流的社会中。

It’s not a surprise. The enormous growth of socialist groups after Bernie Sanders, the widespread support for something like socialism among a younger generation at the polls — I don’t want to deny any of that.

这并不奇怪。Bernie Sanders之后社会主义组织的巨大增长,民意调查中年轻一代对社会主义的广泛支持—我并不想否认这些。

But at the same time, we cannot forget that we’re still small, we’re still weak, and we’re still operating on the margins of this society.

但与此同时,我们不能忘记,我们仍然很小,我们仍然很弱,而且我们仍然行动在这个社会的边缘。

When a small, weak, and marginal group looks out from its minoritarian vantage point onto society, there are two ways in which it tends to make sense of its own marginality. The first one is to believe that people aren’t signing up because they fail to see what we see. They don’t get it.

当一个小的,弱的,边缘的组织从其少数主义的视角看待社会时,有两种方式可以使自己的边缘感变得有意义。第一个是相信人们没有参与,因为他们没有看到我们所看到的。 他们没有明白过来。

On the Left, enormous energy goes into these kinds of explanations. People aren’t with us because they aren’t woke. And why aren’t they woke? Because they’re bigoted, they’re stupid, they’re ignorant, they’re sexist, they’re racist, they’re nationalist, they’re xenophobes, and on and on.

在左派这边,巨大的能量进入了这类解释中。 人们不和我们在一起因为他们没有清醒过来。 他们为什么没有清醒? 因为他们是顽固的,他们是愚蠢的,他们是无知的,他们是性别歧视者,他们是种族主义者,他们是民族主义者,他们是仇外者,以及其他的。

That’s one way to make sense of why people don’t get it. And if I convince you of nothing else, please let me convince you that this is the wrong way.

这是解释人们为什么不能明白过来它的一种方法。 如果我不让你信服,请让我说服你,这是错误的方法。

The correct way, the better way, to make sense of our marginality is to invert this view — to flip it on its head entirely. We are few and they are not with us, not because they’ve failed to understand what we see, but because we’ve failed to understand what they have seen. We have failed to put ourselves in their shoes and take a walk through the world as they’ve experienced it.

正确的方法,更好的方法,来理解我们的边缘性是倒转这种观点——完全翻转它的头。我们是少数,他们没有和我们在一起,不是因为他们不理解我们所看到的,而是因为我们无法理解他们所看到的。 我们没有穿上自己的鞋子,然后走遍他们经历过的世界。

What do I mean by this? Let’s take the enormous orange-haired elephant in the room. How are we to understand a white worker in West Virginia voting for a billionaire windbag? Or how 53 percent of white women could vote for the same man? Good answers to these sorts of political questions are distinguished from bad answers by one simple fact: they take seriously what it means to have lived the life of the person whose actions or beliefs you’re trying to explain.

这是什么意思? 我们来看看房间里巨大的橙色大象。 我们如何理解西弗吉尼亚州一位投票给废话连天的亿万富翁的白人工人? 或者53%的白人女性如何投票给同一个男人? 对这些政治问题的好的答案与的不良答案用一个简单的事实就能区分开来:他们认真对待了那些过着你正试图解释的行为或信仰的人的生活所意味着的东西。

In other words, a good political answer is one which puts you in the shoes of the person you’re trying to account for.

换句话说,一个好的政治答案就是让你穿上你想要解释的人的鞋子。

What does it mean to put yourself in their shoes? This is the critical point. It means remembering that a Trump voter is a human being animated by the same kinds of interests that animate you. She cares about her livelihood, her dignity, her autonomy, her family in much the same way that you do.

把自己穿上他们的鞋子是什么意思? 这是关键点。 这意味着要记住特朗普的选民是一个受到被激励你的利益同样激励的人类。她关心的是她的生计,尊严,自主权,她的家庭,就像你一样。

Your explanation and practice, in other words, should past a simple litmus test: could it explain why I would have voted Trump, had I been born her?

换句话说,你的解释和实践应该通过一个简单的试金石:它能否解释为什么我会投票给特朗普,如果我出生时成为了她?

If we fail to do this, we will find the tasks ahead of us impossible. Organizing is not really the task of preaching to the woke, but in large part, the task of awakening the not-yet-woke.

如果我们不这样做,我们就会发现我们面临的任务是不可能的。进行组织并不是一个向觉醒者宣传就能完成的任务,而是在很大程度上通过唤醒未觉醒者才能完成的任务。

But if you can’t put yourself in their shoes, you will invariably find yourself talking down to them. Rather than meeting them where they are at, you will find yourself livid that they are not yet where you are. And that will lead to a lot of vigorous, condescending, and elitist finger-wagging.

但如果你不能穿上他们的鞋子,你总会发现自己正在居高临下的和他们说话。 比起在他们所在的地方见到他们,你会发现自己不在他们所在的地方。这将导致许多猛烈的,居高临下的和精英主义的手指摇摆。

So this is the third problem, the political problem: the Blank Slate Thesis encourages you to forget that people are always meaningfully animated by certain unshakeable concerns. If we’re going to win people to our side, we have to take these concerns seriously. We have to take their human nature seriously.

所以这是第三个问题,政治问题:白板理论鼓励你忘记人们总是因某些不可动摇的问题而有意义地被激励。 如果我们要赢得人们的支持,我们必须认真对待这些问题。 我们必须认真对待他们的人性。

Human Nature in Capitalism

资本主义下的人性

If you commit to the Blank Slate Thesis, as a socialist you face three kinds of problems. A moral problem, an analytical problem, and a political problem. So don’t do it. Don’t let your friends do it and don’t do it yourself.

如果你认可白板理论,作为一个社会主义者,你面临三类问题。 道德问题,分析问题和政治问题。 所以不要这么做。不要让你的朋友这么做,不要自己这么做。

But so far I haven’t made an argument on how to respond to our annoying cousin — just how not to respond. In fact, I’ve conceded that our cousin, our family free-marketeer, is right on two points. He’s right to argue that there’s a universal human nature, and he’s right to note that this means that people everywhere care about themselves and the interests of their loved ones.

但到目前为止,我还没有就如何回应我们讨厌的堂兄的问题提出意见——只是如何不回应。 事实上,我已经承认,我们的堂兄,我们家中的自由市场鼓吹者,在两点上是正确的。 他认为存在一种普遍的人性是正确的,他也正确的指出这意味着世界各地的人都关心自己和所爱的人的利益。

Given these concessions to his argument, what distinguishes us as socialists from him? How should socialists respond? How do we defend the idea of a new society different from this one — a society in which people aren’t just out to maximize returns to themselves, a society which takes care of the weak, the vulnerable, the unfortunate?

鉴于对他的这一论点的这些让步,我们作为社会主义者与他的区别是什么? 社会主义者应该如何回应? 我们如何捍卫一个与这个社会不同的新社会的观念——一个人们不仅仅是为了让自己获得最大回报的社会,一个照顾弱者,弱势群体,和不幸者的社会?

To defend this vision against his, we have to make two clarifying arguments — one about this thing that we’re calling “human nature,” and one about how it expresses itself in social life.

为了捍卫这种反对他的观点,我们必须提出两个明确的论点—一个是关于我们称之为“人性”的事物,另一个关于它如何在社会生活中表达自己。

The major mistake made by our family free-marketeer is that he paints a flat, simplistic portrait of what human nature entails. So of course he’s partly correct. Humans everywhere care about themselves. They care about having enough to eat, they want to be cared for when sick, they care about having a roof over our heads. We also care deeply about certain intangibles. Our autonomy, our dignity, and maybe even some unsavory things about ourselves — what people think of us, our standing in the eyes of our peers.

我们家中的自由市场鼓吹者的主要错误在于他描绘了一幅关于人性的平面的,简化的画面。 所以他当然是部分正确的。 人类在所有地方都关心他们自己。 他们关心有足够的食物,他们想要在生病时得到照顾,他们关心的是在我们头上有一个屋顶。我们也非常关心某些无形资产。 我们的自主权,尊严,甚至可能是关于我们自己的一些令人讨厌的事情—人们对我们的看法,我们在同龄人眼中的地位。

But our antagonist’s view of human nature is one in which we care only about these things, in which we only care about maximizing returns from the world to ourselves.

但是我们的敌人对人性的看法是我们只关心这些,我们只关心将世界到自己的回报最大化。

This is the bourgeois view. The abstract human is basically like a two-year-old on an airplane. Nobody else matters. And if this were true, our project would be doomed. Out of toddlers on an airplane, I think you’d probably be able to build a world of an Ayn Rand novel, but you wouldn’t be able to build socialism.

这是资产阶级的观点。 这个抽象的人基本上就像飞机上的两岁小孩。 不在乎其他任何人。如果这是真的,我们的计划将注定失败。在飞机上的幼儿们,我想你可能能够建立一个Ayn Rand小说中的世界,但你将无法建立社会主义。

But the bourgeois view is only partly correct. Humans are capable of many things other than simple selfishness. We’re capable of caring for others, we’re capable of empathy and compassion, we have the capacity to distinguish fairness from unfairness, and the capacity to hold ourselves to those standards.

但这一资产阶级的观点只是部分正确。除了简单的自私之外,人类还能做很多事情。 我们有能力照顾他人,我们有同情心和恻隐之心,我们有能力区分公平与不公平,以及有能力坚持这些标准。

The bourgeois view inflates our selfish drives and ignores these other qualities. Socialists do not have to do the same. Human nature is not infinitely plastic. Its contain a variety of drives and capacities — some inner demons and some better angels, to quote Steven Pinker.

这一资产阶级的观点夸大了我们自私的动力,忽视了其他这些品质。社会主义者们不必这样做。 人性不是无限可塑的。 引用Steven Pinker:它包含各种驱动和能力—一些内部的恶魔和一些更好的天使。

Here’s the second point. Notice what our antagonist’s argument entailed: that whatever the character of the society in which humans find themselves, their underlying selfishness, their underlying competitiveness, is going to eat away at social structures until those social structures have been rendered irrelevant or totally transformed. Biology overpowers society.

这是第二点。 注意我们的敌人的论证所包含的内容:无论人类发现自己时所处的社会特征是怎样的,他们潜在的自私,潜在的竞争力,都会蚕食社会结构,直到这些社会结构变得无关紧要或完全转变为止。生物学压倒了社会。

In response, it is tempting to argue that human nature does not matter at all. But this is wrong, for the three reasons already outlined. So what should we say, in response? We should argue that human nature is always relevant, but never decisive.

作为回应,人们很容易认为人性根本不重要。 但由于已经概述的三个原因,这是错误的。 那么我们该怎么回应呢? 我们应该争辩说,人性总是相关的,但从不起决定作用。

Think about the way in which society is organized. What do people have to do to reproduce themselves? What do they have to do to other people in order to reproduce themselves? These facts exercise selectional pressures on the set of drives that constitute our human nature. The socialist wager, in a sentence, is that a better society would encourage our better tendencies.

想想社会组织的方式。 人们需要做些什么来再生产自己? 为了再生产自己,他们必须对其他人做些什么? 这些事实对构成我们人性的驱动集合施加了选择压力。 一句话,社会主义的保证是一个更好的社会会鼓励我们的更好的倾向。

This is not to argue that the other aspects of our nature can ever be ignored. A better society will no doubt have to respect certain limits. It will have to satisfy our needs. It will have to grant us our desires for freedom, for autonomy, our need to be respected. Socialism will most definitely fail if it requires us to be altruistic or saints, because the vast majority of people are not built to be either of those things.

这并不是说我们的人性的其他方面可以被忽视。 一个更好的社会无疑必须尊重某些限制。 它必须满足我们的需求。 它必须给予我们对自由,自治和我们需要得到尊重的渴望。 如果社会主义要求我们是利他主义者或圣人,那么社会主义肯定会失败,因为绝大多数人并不会成为他们。

Whatever else socialism might mean, it cannot mean a society in which people are called upon to systemically sacrifice themselves for some ideal, be it the fatherland, the working class, the world revolution, the supreme leader. That road leads straight to Pyongyang.

无论社会主义可能意味着什么,它都不能指一个人们被要求为一些理想而系统地牺牲自己的社会,无论是祖国,工人阶级,世界革命,还是最高领导人。 那条路直接通往平壤。

However, a society which caters to everyone’s universal needs, which helps everyone flourish — this is a society that would encourage and nurture the good that lies inside all of us.

然而,一个满足每个人的普遍需求的社会,这有助于每个人都蓬勃发展—这个社会将鼓励和培育存在于我们所有人内部的利益。

It is true in some important sense that our free-marketeer cousin knows only capitalist men and women. Socialist men and women would be different. They would still care about themselves and their needs, but a better society would also encourage them to take seriously the interests and needs of others.

的确,在某种重要意义上,我们的自由市场鼓吹者堂兄只知道资本主义的男女。 社会主义的男女会有所不同。 他们仍然会关心自己和他们的需求,但一个更好的社会也会鼓励他们认真对待他人的利益和需求。

Human Nature in Socialism

社会主义下的人性

How would it do this? We can only speculate, of course. But I can think of two ways. First, a society which meets everyone’s needs is a society in which there would be less to quarrel about. Less reason for aggression, less reason for violence, less reason for predation. Compare the person you are when you’re sharing a box of cookies with your brother or sister, to the person you are when you’re sharing one cookie.

社会主义会如何做到这些? 当然,我们只能推测。 但我可以想到两种方式。 首先,满足每个人需求的社会是一个不会争吵的社会。 减少侵略的理由,减少暴力的理由,减少掠夺的理由。 将与兄弟或姐妹共享一盒曲奇饼时的你与共享一个曲奇饼时的你进行比较。

The second point is that socialism would also be a much more egalitarian society. People would be each other’s equals — not subordinates or superiors.

第二点是,社会主义也将是一个更加平等的社会。 人们彼此是平等的—不是下属或上级。

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Stanford prison experiment, which illustrated that hierarchies can make monsters out of ordinary humans. Well, the absence of these hierarchies should make it easier to bid farewell to the monsters inside us.

我相信你们中的许多人都听说过斯坦福大学的监狱实验,这个实验表明,等级制度可以使怪物冲出普通人类的体内。 嗯,缺少这些等级制度应该可以更容易让我们告别我们内部的怪物。

In a more developed, and more egalitarian society, better humans will flourish. Socialists one, libertarian cousin zero.

在一个更发达,更平等的社会中,更好的人类将蓬勃发展。 社会主义者一,自由主义堂兄零。

You have perhaps been tempted in the past to make the argument that there is no such thing as a human nature. That temptation is understandable — I’ve been there. But it’s wrong for three reasons: a moral reason, for an analytical reason, and for a political reason.

在过去,你或许曾经受过诱惑,认为没有人性这种东西。 这种诱惑是可以理解的——我曾经也是如此。 但这是错的,因为有三个原因:道德原因,分析原因和政治原因。

Socialists do believe — we must believe — that there is something called human nature. In fact, I believe that you believe it, whether or not you believe that you believe it. But we make two arguments that distinguish us from our bourgeois antagonists.

社会主义者确实相信—我们必须相信—有一种叫做人性的东西存在。 事实上,我相信你相信它,不管你是否相信你相信它。 但我们提出了两个将我们与我们的资产阶级敌人区别开来的论点。

First, human nature comprises not just an interest in ourselves, but also compassion, empathy, capacity for reflection, capacity to be moral. And second, the way in which society is organized can amplify these drives and downplay others.

首先,人性不仅包括在乎自己的利益,还包括同情心,同理心,反思的能力,拥有道德的能力。 其次,社会组织的方式可以增大这些驱动力并减少其他驱动力。

All this means that another world is definitely possible. Don’t let the fools get you down and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

这一切意味着另一个世界绝对是可能的。 不要让傻瓜们使你失望,不要让任何人告诉你相反的东西。

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/human-nature-socialism-capitalism-greed-morality-needs/

英国社会主义医疗系统NHS介绍

要说这个世界上运转的比较好的福利国家医疗系统,英国的NHS(National Health Service)是一定会在内的,而未来中国的医疗系统也可以参考NHS。相比之下,美国的以私人保险公司为主的医疗系统就很糟糕了,几千万人得不到保障(奥巴马曾经试图解决这个问题,但被唐纳德希特勒和共和党搅黄了),私人保险公司浪费大量资源在市场营销上,穷人看不起病。

对英国有一定了解的人,大概已经猜到NHS是谁推行的了:没错,就是被撒切尔和其他资本主义哈巴狗们臭骂“左疯”的工党!虽然90年代之后布莱尔为首的工党败类把工党变成了资本主义哈巴狗党,但是当年推行NHS的工党可是个在党章里写着要建设社会主义的如假包换的社会主义政党。

关于工党历史,有兴趣的人可以大致看下Labour Party (UK)wiki,我这里就不具体介绍了,简单来说,工党起源于多个社会主义组织和独立工会组织,主要倾向于社会民主主义,一直以实现社会主义为目标,但在上世纪90年代被布莱尔为首的工党败类改造为鼓吹狗屁自由市场的资本主义哈巴狗党,直到2015年Jeremy Corbyn赢得党内选举,成为主席之后,工党才重新恢复对社会主义的追求。有兴趣的人可以看下工党官网,注意现在工党的Logo是红色玫瑰,而红色玫瑰是社会民主主义(democratic socialism,或称民主社会主义)的标志。

来看下NHS的具体历史吧:

By the end of World War II, the concept of an integrated, state-funded hospital service had become established and, in 1948, the newly-elected Labour (socialist) government created a National Health Service (NHS) as none of a series of welfare reforms designed to guarantee basic levels of personal and social security. For the first time, a UK government assumed responsibility for the provis ion of a comprehensive preventive and curative service for the whole population.
到第二次世界大战结束时,政府资助的综合医院服务的概念已经建立,并且在1948年,新当选的工党(社会主义)政府创建了一个国家健康服务(NHS),而不是一系列的旨在保障基本生活水平和社会保障水平的福利改革。英国政府首次承担起为全体人民提供全面预防和治疗服务的责任。(事实上,NHS是世界上第一个政府负责的公共医疗系统。)
The fundamental principles underlying the NHS were, and still largely are, that services would be funded predominantly from general taxation and that they would in general be free at the point of use, comprehensive and available to all, regardless of means to pay. A small but significant privately-funded health care systems has always existed alongside the NHS, expanding and contracting in line with the country’s broader economic state.However, for nearly fifty years, British people have received almost all their health care without paying directly for it.
NHS的基本原则曾经是,并且在很大程度上现在仍然是,医疗服务将主要由一般税收资助,并且它们通常在使用时免费,全面且可供所有人使用,无论支付方式如何。一个小但明显的私人医疗保健系统一直与NHS一起存在,根据该国更广泛的经济状况扩大或收缩。然而,近50年来,英国人几乎没有直接支付过医疗保健费用。
The structure of the new service reflected its disparate origins and artificial divisions between different elements persisted for many years. There were three main strands¹:
新服务的结构反映了其不同的起源,并且不同元素之间的人为划分持续了多年。 主要有三条线:
•State owned (nationalised) hospitals
国家拥有(国有化的)医院
Hospitals that had previously been run by voluntary charitable organisations and local government became the responsibility of Regional Hospitals Boards, with local responsibility delegated to Hospitals Management Committees. Acute specialities retained their traditional high status in comparison with the relatively low profile services for the elderly or the mentally ill. Until the early 1990s long-term care was provided in large, impersonal institutions and it is only relatively recently that acute services for the elderly and mentally ill have been integrated with other types of hospital care.
以前由志愿慈善组织和当地政府管理的医院由区域医院委员会负责,地方责任委托给医院管理委员会。与针对老年人或精神疾病患者的相对低调的服务相比,急诊保持其传统的高地位。直到1990s初期,大型非个人机构才提供长期护理,而且最近才将老年人和精神病患者的急症服务与其他类型的医院护理相结合。
•A national network of general practitioners
一个全国全科医生网络
A network of General Practitioners (GPs or family doctors) replaced the panel system. They were responsible for personal primary health care and received fees which were set and paid nationally. They were also the gatekeepers to other health services, referring patients on (e .g. to hospital services) as they thought appropriate. Executive Councils, which received money directly from the Ministry of Health, administered the family practitioner services.
全科医生网络(全科医生或家庭医生)取代了面板系统。 他们负责个人初级卫生保健,并收取全国政府设定的和支付的费用。他们也是其他医疗服务的守门人,在他们认为合适的情况下转介患者(例如医院服务)。执行理事会直接从卫生部获得资金,管理家庭医生服务。
•Community and domiciliary health services
社区和家庭健康服务
Services such as home nurses, public and environmental health and health prevention/promotion continued to be run by separate, elected Local (municipal Authorities or Councils, which were also responsible for housing, roads and education.
家庭护士,公共和环境卫生以及健康预防/促进等服务继续由独立的当选地方(市政当局或理事会)负责,这些机构或理事会也负责住房,道路和教育。
The three strands were financed centrally but managed separately. Throughout the history of the NHS, this initial division of functions between separate statutory organisations created problems in the provision of comprehensive and co-ordinated services. It is only recently that all three strands of direct health care have been provided within, and commissioned by, the NHS. Nonetheless, functions such as personal social services, long term care for most elderly people and responsibility for the environment, housing, roads education and employment (w hich are of fundamental importance to overall health) remain the preserve of local and central government. Periodic attempts to create a more cohesive approach to social policy in general, and health in particular, have not been very successful.
这三条线是集中提供资金但分开管理的。 在整个NHS的历史中,不同法定组织之间的这种初始职能分工在提供全面和协调的服务方面产生了问题。 直到最近,所有三条线的直接医疗保健都在NHS内部提供并由其委托。 尽管如此,个人社会服务,对大多数老年人的长期护理以及对环境,住房,道路教育和就业(对整体健康至关重要)的责任等功能仍然在地方和中央政府中保留。 定期尝试制定更具凝聚力的社会政策方法,特别是健康方法,并未取得很大成功。
这是大致介绍,具体内容有兴趣的人去NHS的官网上自己看吧:https://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Pages/NHSServices.aspx
哦,说一个坏消息:NHS从上世纪80年代开始就一直受到威胁,被迫“内部市场化”,被削减资金,而这是谁干的呢?是撒切尔这个保守主义纳粹垃圾和一直都是资本主义哈巴狗的纳粹保守党干的:

 

In the 1980s, however, Margaret Thatcher’s government began an attack on the principles of the NHS that has not yet subsided. As public health doctor and scholar Allyson Pollock describes in NHS Plc: The Privatisation of our Health Care, Thatcher’s government imposed intermittent austerity funding and the incremental imposition of market-based reforms such as the “internal market” and the “private finance initiative,” signaling a retreat from the NHS’s initial collectivist provisions and a partial move toward commodification.

然而,在1980s,玛格丽特·撒切尔政府开始攻击迄今为止尚未消失的NHS原则。正如公共卫生医生和学者Allyson Pollock在NHS Plc所描述的那样:我们的医疗保健被私有化,撒切尔政府实施间歇性紧缩资金以及逐步实施市场化改革,如“内部市场”和“私人融资计划”,标志着从NHS最初的集体主义供应撤退,并部分转向商业化。(医疗市场化会带来什么后果,看看中国那些活活病死和被疾病一夜回到解放前的人就知道。顺便说一句,撒切尔是哈耶克的信徒,其”名言“为:”没有社会这回事“”穷人穷困是个人原因“”没人有权成为同性恋“,呵呵,标准的资本主义哈巴狗纳粹嘴脸。

The Labour government of Tony Blair, as she notes, continued down the road first paved by Thatcher. However, Blair’s government did eventually initiate a much-needed increase in funding: to just under 7 percent a year, almost twice the historical average of 4 percent. This overdue boost, however, would not survive the Great Recession.

正如她所指出的那样,托尼·布莱尔的工党政府继续沿着撒切尔首先铺好的道路前进。 然而,布莱尔政府最终确实开始增加了急需的资金:每年仅低于7%,几乎是历史平均值4%的两倍。 然而,这种过期的推动力将无法在大衰退中存活下来。

In 2010, David Cameron’s Conservative-led government was elected and destabilized the NHS through two great upheavals. First, the government reorganized the NHS through the passage of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act; second, it instituted a period of funding austerity the likes of which the NHS had never seen.

2010年,戴维•卡梅伦的保守党领导的政府当选,并通过两次重大动荡破坏了NHS的稳定。 首先,政府通过2012年“健康与社会护理法”重组了NHS; 第二,它设立了一个资金紧缩的时期,这是NHS从未见过的。

来源:Saving the NHS

社会主义者铸造了NHS,而资本主义哈巴狗们用尽手段破坏NHS,所以,什么是资本主义?资本主义就是少数有钱人奴役大部分没钱的人;什么是社会主义?社会主义就是不让任何一个人掉队。

为对社会主义感兴趣的初学者提供的指南

作者简介:https://democraticsocialism.noblogs.org/post/2018/12/24/%e4%bd%9c%e8%80%85%e7%ae%80%e4%bb%8b/

迄今为止我博客上已经有不少社会主义文章了,但这些文章不少都是针对已经对社会主义有一定了解的人的,而初学者,特别是那些刚翻墙不久,还未完全摆脱中共洗脑的人,不一定能看懂这些文章,故此我专门写一篇针对初学者提供的社会主义介绍和学习指南。当然,如果你认为资本主义是伟光正的,是历史的终结,那么你也没必要看下去了,我只能告诉你:资本主义不仅不伟光正,而且正在以及一直在把人类和地球推向毁灭的边缘!

首先,很多初学者会认为社会主义就是中国或苏联模式(古巴越南朝鲜东欧傀儡卫星国都是苏联和中国模式的延伸),那么我先问一个问题:既然你们已经知道中共满嘴跑火车,说话当放屁,那么中共对社会主义的定义为什么就不是放屁了呢?

中共对社会主义的定义当然是放屁,就好像朝鲜自称“朝鲜民主主义人民共和国”一样,都是无耻的挂羊头卖狗肉而已。拿苏联和中国的极权暴行来指责社会主义,与拿朝鲜三胖政权的暴行指责民主,是同样可笑的。

不妨先看看这世界上的先进思想来源吧:现代文明先进思想来源

同时再看看到底什么才是纳粹:纳粹辨识手册

以及傻逼纳粹的无耻嘴脸:傻逼纳粹人肉我朋友事件纪实,以及攻击者曝光

然后再看看到底拥有怎样的价值观的人才是社会主义者:社会主义者辨别指南

那么,有人会问:既然苏联和中国都不是社会主义国家,那么他们到底是什么国家?看起来也不像资本主义国家啊?

先说结论:苏联和中国就是资本主义国家,而且是资本主义中最恶劣的一种:国家资本主义极权,英文名:state-capitalist authoritarian regime 。至于为什么说苏联和中国是国家资本主义极权,“苏联和中国到底是什么?”这篇文章里有详细分析。当然,这文章里只分析了苏联和中国到底是什么,而苏联和中国为什么会变得如此,这些就需要查阅左派历史相关资料了,简单来说,苏联和中国都经历了劣币驱逐良币,本身民主没建立,在独裁制度下,国家资本主义者把社会主义者驱逐和屠杀了,最终建立了国家资本主义极权。在苏联,这一切发生在列宁去世后,而在中国,这一切发生在上世纪30年代。

关于对国家资本主义,特别是中国国家资本主义极权的批判,我的博客上有个专栏:批判国家资本主义极权专题

其中有一篇来自ICIJ的离岸资产披露资料是非常有力的打脸材料:ICIJ关于中国精英的离岸资产披露(资料摘录)

有人会问:那么红色高棉和委内瑞拉也是国家资本主义吗?红色高棉并不是国家资本主义,但也不是社会主义,而是全国范围的奴隶制大米种植园;而委内瑞拉是国家资本主义,马杜罗国家资本主义黑帮人为操纵汇率贬值货币导致经济危机。也就是说,这两个国家与社会主义毫无关联,和中共一样说话当放屁。具体分析文章:“如果我们有了大米,我们就能拥有一切”批判红色高棉的理论和实践(“If we have rice, we can have everything”: a critique of Khmer Rouge ideology and practice)委内瑞拉危机和左派需要吸取的教训(The crisis in Venezuela and its lessons for the left)

然后有人会问了:现在我知道苏联和中国不是社会主义了,那么社会主义到底是什么呢?

社会主义是什么,这个问题很复杂,但也可以简单回答:社会主义是反对一切形式的剥削压迫,是普遍而直接的参与式民主,以政治民主+经济民主为核心,是每个人都可以自由的决定自己,但不能决定别人。

推荐一篇介绍社会主义思想的文章:迈向自由:民主社会主义者的理论和实践(Toward Freedom: Democratic Socialist Theory and Practice)

对社会民主主义/民主社会主义的专门介绍:Democratic Socialism Is About Democracy(民主社会主义是关于民主的)

社会主义的自由观:社会主义与自由

社会主义者的思维模式:社会主义者是如何思考的——介绍唯物主义并批判唯心主义

当然社会主义思想肯定不是一篇文章就能说完的,作为民主社会主义者,我的博客上有民主社会主义理论文章集合:民主社会主义理论

社会主义也是一个自由的思想集合,里面有马克思主义,托洛茨基主义,民主社会主义,生态社会主义,费边社会主义,法兰克福学派,欧洲共产主义,马克思人道主义等等。要搞清楚这些主义的出处和主张,就必须要了解左派历史,而我的博客上有一个专门介绍左派历史的专栏:左派历史

其中推荐初学者阅读这篇文章:左派历史和现实概述

有些初学者看到社会主义者的言论之后,会奇怪:社会主义者怎么和中共一样反美?

首先,说社会主义者反美,是不准确的,社会主义者反资本主义,而美国则是资本主义大本营,社会主义者必然会对美国资本主义与帝国主义进行批判,但这并不局限于美国本身,社会主义者对中国的,拉美的,非洲的,中东的资本主义也一样批判。同时,社会主义者也会批判右派们,特别是中国右派们加在美国身上的“民主灯塔”这一虚假的光环:被美国推翻的民选政府,支持极权独裁的“民主灯塔”

关于美国,我的博客上有专门的专题:批判美国专题,揭露了不少中国右派的无耻谎言。特别是这篇:论资本主义的“言论自由”,保守主义和资本主义哈巴狗们天天吹嘘言论自由,而事实却是,他们从不给社会主义者言论自由。

至于说中共反美,完全错误。是不是很惊讶?但别忘了,中共这种说话当放屁的政权,嘴上说反美那也是必然不能信的,中共和美国精英们(商人和政客)的关系是表面互骂背后勾搭,看看这两篇文章就知道了:华尔街上的中国太子党(1-4)川普尴尬了!中国照顾伊万卡中国工厂?

而毛贼时代的中国呢?也根本不反美:书籍推荐:《毛泽东以后的中国》

一九七二年以来,北京的外交政策已经变成与美国的右派一样的右了,它坚决主张北大西洋公约的增强,美国制造中子弹,日本重新武装,而且支持全世界的反动的军事独裁政府,北京支持这些反动政府的唯一先决条件,就是这些政府和中国建立外交关系,很少国家会不愿意这样做的,所以现在跟中国友好的政权—即不会受到公开批评的政权—包括智利的皮诺息军人执政,西班牙王朝及伊朗国王等令人讨厌的统治者,如果你今天住在中国的话,你永远不会知道在伊朗及智利还有政治犯被迫害,被处决呢!

是不是很惊讶呢?中国的反共右派们经常声称左派亲共,事实是他们才是亲共的那个(为邓坦克的新自由主义垃圾政策洗地,对中共小骂大帮忙,满嘴跑火车,帮中共鼓吹大一统压制自决,鼓吹国族主义纳粹垃圾,鼓吹仇穆),而社会主义网站和组织只要是了解中国的,无一不是全部批判:外国左派关于中国的批判文章

而社会主义者对宗教的态度如何呢?社会主义者自然是反对压迫性的一神教教条,坚持政教分离,批评落后的基督教和伊斯兰教教义践踏人权,但社会主义者反对的是宗教本身,而鼓吹所谓穆斯林威胁的那批纳粹,不过是在鼓吹对穆斯林的种族仇恨而已。

关于伊斯兰教和穆斯林,以及中东国家,中文圈的信息基本都是被仇穆十字军们歪曲的,而这些仇穆十字军同时也吹捧基督教,把现代文明无耻的说成是不比伊斯兰教文明多少的(事实上历史上一直比伊斯兰教更野蛮,而迄今为止依旧在非洲拉美制造人权灾难)基督教缔造的,呵呵,真是无耻。现代文明和基督教狗屁关系都没有,恰恰是反对基督教霸权的社会主义者们铸造的。

关于伊斯兰教的相关信息,对仇穆十字军谎言的驳斥,以及对伊斯兰原教旨主义崛起原因的分析专栏:伊斯兰教相关

驳斥基督教谎言的专栏:揭露基督教谎言

关于社会主义者如何铸造民主自由人权的历史:书籍推荐:《 Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 》

“在这一成就中,我们都是受益者。如果我们考虑欧洲宪法制定的巨大的戏剧性时刻,从1860s到1989年,民主前沿向前推进,而左派的激进民主机构一直存在着。左派在这些时刻以及在漫长而艰苦的时期中争取的政治价值已经成为我们都接受的价值观。斯大林之下退化的布尔什维克革命和二战之后东欧的斯大林化,必然会损害社会主义的名声。但在欧洲的其他地方,社会主义者对我们所拥有的关于民主的一切,从追求民主政府,获得公民自由,以及将第一部民主宪法转变为更有争议的社会正义理想,扩大公民身份的定义和福利国家。”

有人问:我对社会主义有了解了,但想驳斥资本主义者的时候,还是觉得很吃力,有什么批判资本主义的文章吗?

当然有!社会主义者做得最多的工作之一就是批判资本主义,特别是批判肆虐世界四十年的新自由主义,而要批判新自由主义,就需要批判新自由主义最主要的吹鼓手芝加哥学派了:聊聊芝加哥学派和他们的信徒们的无耻以及新自由主义的阴谋(更新)

我还有两篇专门反驳资本主义哈巴狗谎言的文章:对资本主义哈巴狗的种种狗屁的反驳以资本主义哈巴狗Lynx Evil为例,批判资本主义的种种洗脑狗屁

而我的博客上也有两个专栏:批判新自由主义专题资本主义黑皮书

顺便,我的推文当中也有不少反驳新自由主义哈巴狗谎言的:短评与段子

资本主义哈巴狗们经常使用逻辑谬误骗人,因此掌握逻辑学知识也是很重要的:常见思维误区与逻辑谬误汇总(资料转载)

再介绍一下左派网站(并不都是社会主义网站,有些是无政府主义和毛派网站)和社会主义书籍吧:左派网站索引左派书籍推荐

最后,自我保护也是很重要的,我们是在与资本主义作战,而资本主义是比这世界上所有独裁政权加起来更加强大的敌人,这个世界上所有的国家都是资本主义国家,资本主义用枪炮刺刀皮鞭和无数的谎言征服了全世界,所以,掌握保护自己的技术就非常重要了:对抗压迫的技术

还有不少我曾经发布在google+上的匿名技术相关文章:迁移自google账户

最后再推荐一个我参与制定的反共计划吧:https://plus.google.com/+LynxEvil/posts/fMEVvbHs1mM ,链接中的这位是我曾经的战友,反共计划是我和他一起提出的,后来因为价值观分歧和我闹翻了。不过,计划本身我是一直支持的。